TREMBLE FOR ME


07. Perfect Outing as Devised by Zim


Zim waved awkwardly, at the passing students. Some of these pathetic human life forms still recognized him. That might be bad for his mission. Infiltration was sometimes simply a matter of not being recognized afterwards. The more familiar any human was with his appearance the more likely that one might recognize him in another disguise. Although, that might have had more to do with the fact that he was presently attempting to be recognizable. After all, it wouldn't do to come to pick up his love-pig if she had no idea who he was. With that in mind Zim glanced at his timekeeping device. Gaz was approximately fifteen minutes late. That wasn't a good sign. If Zim remembered correctly Gaz tended to leave straight after class, if she wasn't then something had gone wrong. Perhaps attacking a student had earned her a detention, or perhaps his sleep disturbing phone call had made Gaz unable to attend school.

A sudden pain shot up Zim's arm, his attention became drawn to the sullen earth teenager that glared at him and crossed her arms. "What on earth was that for?" Zim asked, rubbing his wounded arm, it would likely bruise from the force of Gaz's punch.

"What do you think you're doing," Gaz hissed, her cheeks pink, "showing up outside my school, where everyone can see you?"

"You told Zim to," he huffed. "Yesterday you said that expected Zim to call, e-mail, and show up outside your school. Now you have yelled at Zim for calling and for showing up outside your school, should Zim expect the same outcome from the e-mails as well?"

"I said showing up outside my school would be stupid," Gaz countered hotly. Then letting out an exhausted breath, she calmed herself enough to address the problem, "Why are you here?"

"Zim has planned the perfect date-outing, as chosen by the list of Zim's regular activity."

"And you couldn't just call me after school because?"

"Because, little-Gaz, the magical love adventure begins now!" Zim yelled with pride in his voice. An arm stretched from his Pak, and quickly accepted the rubbery black gloves, before Zim reached out and entwined his fingers with Gaz's hand.

Gaz's cheeks became even brighter, but she fell into paced beside him, "Fine, Zim, just know that if you're going to waste my time, I will have to destroy you."

Zim walked her back to his base, then into one of the elevators that led down to Zim's real base.

Throughout all of Zim's time on earth, Gaz had been permitted entrance into the underbelly of Zim's base only three times, and only in dire circumstance. She'd broken in a half dozen other times, but Zim did not simply just let someone into his base. Those little escapades into Zim's base had pretty much ended once Zim wasn't actively threatening earth. The elevator was smaller than Gaz remembered. It was horrible, even though she could school her face into a deadpan expression, she could not stop the rush of heat as blood colored her face as she leaned against Zim.

It was vaguely reminiscent of when he had handed her his gun at Bloaty's. Letting Gaz into his base was something very vulnerable and un-Irken. That's what real relationships were about though, Gaz leaned against Zim a little more as she thought about it. Even if Zim was an alien and couldn't really understand the concept, it seemed like there was something in him that knew, something instinctual. He was letting her in and she was letting him in, little by little. Gaz vaguely wondered how close she could get before his lifetime of military programming kicked in, and he found that closeness with a human was detestable.

The elevator door swung open, and Zim led Gaz into an empty room. "Okay… empty rooms are not really good date material, Zim."

Zim pulled out a control system, for a minute he rapidly turned the main dial, and the room around them swirled with various locations and activities. It was some sort of hologram projecting room, Gaz watched the scenes pass by until Zim settled it into a room that looked like a firing range. Two little desks with full controls and monitors looked out across a long empty lane. Zim typed a few commands into the control panel and a cardboard cut-out with a rippled bulls-eye effect popped up the other end. "As a militant species, regular training ensures that a soldier is ready for deployment at any time. How would you like to shoot some hostile species?" Zim lifted up a simple laser, "Think of it as one of your earth video games," and Gaz couldn't resist a dark smile as she took the weapon.

Lasers were so much more elegant than conventional human weapons. Gaz had been to a firing range only once, and decided that she didn't like it. No matter how controlled the explosion, that was what human guns were, it was tough and gritty, and not something Gaz wanted to repeat. Laser fire, on the other hand was like handling a silk thread. Delicate, deadly, and, "Near miss?" Gaz demanded of the result that flashed on the screen next to her.

"If you don't score at least a thousand points, I'm never touching you again," Zim threatened teasingly, making Gaz flush and growl angrily at him. He typed in the same commands in his own side and another, roughly humanoid figure appeared down his lane. He lifted his weapon, and Gaz watched the words "kill shot" flash on his monitor.

With another growl, she aimed and fired again and "injury" flashed on her monitor. Then Zim's pop-up fell and another shape, large, with another set of vital points popped up. "Dammit," Gaz growled, before she continued firing.

"Having trouble, little Gaz?" Zim asked.

"Shut up, Zim," Gaz snapped, finally the words "kill shot" appeared on her screen and her pop-up changed, only a half-second before Zim's.

Gaz growled again, ignoring her stupid screen, and focussed on shooting the target instead. After about a dozen aliens, Zim's stopped popping up, and he took his laser and started firing on Gaz's targets. "What?! You can't do that!" Gaz snapped.

"An enemy on the field is a threat no matter who is supposed to kill it," Zim countered, and Gaz glared at him, since his shots were still counting up "kill shots" on his own monitor.

"You cheating alien scum," Gaz yelled, sounding more like her brother she ever wanted to. Zim, surprisingly, didn't seem taken aback but he continued to steal her points until her set of targets was finished as well. "Calculate the score, now!" Gaz demanded, putting the laser down and crossing her arms at Zim. Zim tapped their control panels, and numbers rolled past in a list of shots made the number of "miss" shots, "near miss" shots, "hit" shots, "mild injury" shots, "injury" shots, "serious injury", "grave injury", "fatal wound", "kill shot", "instant death" and lastly "overkill" shots. It was obvious even through that that Zim's scores were much higher than Gaz's, at the bottom was a total damage score. Zim's neared a half million, Gaz's was just under a hundred thousand.

"Less than a thousand points, huh?"

"Zim never said it was a hard goal."

Gaz slugged his shoulder, the same shoulder, which made Zim wince in pain. Then Gaz noted her scorecard blink with an extra five hundred points, putting her over the hundred thousand mark. "It's real flattering to know that the bar you set for me was so low," Gaz crossed her arms angrily.

"Three points," Zim said loudly, catching the female's attention, "that is how much damage Zim did the first time shooting."

"Seriously?" Gaz looked at him, "how did you only score three points?"

"Zim may have accidentally shot his own foot," Zim looked at the wall, listening to Gaz snort in derision. "Besides, Zim's threat was merely to motivate you to perform well, Zim did not doubt that the Gaz-human had ability enough to surpass the necessary damage points." Gaz huffed in frustration again, it didn't make sense, why would Zim deliberately tease her and try to make her mad. "Unlike Gaz, Zim is very inclined to touch his love-pig," Zim explained with a childish pout.

The heat ran to Gaz's cheeks and she whirled away from him. Zim was not allowed to say that kind of stuff, he wasn't supposed to, she had told him not to. Damn him, and his stupid displays of affection. So Zim liked to touch her, it was curiosity, a fascination with a novel tactile experience; it was not the rush of attraction that Gaz felt whenever he touched her. Zim didn't have a sex drive. Zim was Irken, and everything that entailed, his biological inclination was domination, superiority, there wasn't room for affection in that mindset. Whatever this was, she would hit a wall, Zim was just weird and outgoing enough that he could fake it. Zim had formed friendships before, Gaz had seen Dib's notes on the topic before. Zim could give every outward display of friendship or attachment, and never look at the human again. To some extent Zim could let anyone in. Gaz couldn't, her walls were front and center. Maddy, her brother, even her father, no one was allowed past those walls. Zim couldn't be allowed either. Even though his every sweet gesture chipped away at the emotional stonework, Gaz could not let her walls crumble. If he got past her walls when she hit his, she wasn't sure if she could survive it.

"Gaz-human?" Zim asked, apparently Gaz had gotten lost in thought. He sounded so sweet and concerned, Gaz hardened her glare. She had to get to his walls, find the point where he would push her away before it got out of hand, before she crumbled.

"Why are you still in your disguise?" Gaz demanded. "I know you're an alien. You know that I know. We're in your base. There's no one else here. Take it off."

"It wouldn't make you uncomfortable?" Zim asked, in a sultry whisper that told Gaz he was still in the mood to tease her.

"Makes no difference to me what you look like down here," Gaz said crossing her arms, "I just can't image a wig being comfortable over antennae."

"It isn't," Zim took off the net of hair, "and the lenses are all scratchy," he took those out as well. "Must be easier to be grumpy as something that looks less human, eh?"

"How do you get an overkill shot?" Gaz asked, changing the subject.

"With a simple laser," Zim started typing in Gaz's controls, and one of the pop-ups that Gaz had seen earlier reappeared, "the gashlorg-beast is the only species that you could get an overkill shot on. They are famous for being able to create the loudest organic sound ever. Their nasal cavity is filled with compressed air; that they can use to trumpet loud enough to communicate across mountain ranges. Normally when a gashlorg-beast dies their nasal cavity slowly deflates making a small hissing sound, but if you can fire a heated laser blast up its nostril then the compressed air will escape in an explosion."

Gaz grabbed the laser gun, and squinted at the cut-out, then, very gently, Zim's arm reached up around her steadying and aiming the shot. "Overkill Shot" flashed in blood-red across Gaz's screen.

"Of course, you don't experience the full effect unless we switch to gore mode," with the press of a button the cut-out disappeared, and in its place was a hulking, frothing beast, panting and occasionally shuffling its stance. Once again, Zim helped with Gaz's aim, and once she squeezed the trigger: A resounding bang rippled across the firing range, pushing back Gaz's hair. Orange hued blood, and a variety of guts splattered across the firing range. The beast's upper torso was devastated, and the lower torso flopped uselessly to the ground. "Overkill Shot" flashed across the screen once more.

Gaz's ears were ringing, but she could feel Zim's breath on her cheek even though she couldn't hear him, and his arms wrapped her, protectively. Then she realized she was shaking. She wasn't afraid though, it was just the sudden jump of adrenaline.

Zim relaxed, Gaz was bouncing slightly, and smiling brightly. "I can't hear you," she yelled at him. Now Zim snorted, he'd forgotten that human ears stopped registering noise if they became overwhelmed. Still, it seemed like he had pleased the human female with the addition of visible carnage. Zim held up on finger, the human indicator of time frame, and started to type more instructions into the console.

The shooting range cleared of blood and guts and another alien creature materialized. This looked like a feathered stingray, and Gaz tilted her head to the side curiously. Then Zim handed her another gun, it was cold to the touch, and steaming? Zim would explain it later, for now his hands guided her aim, the two handed weapon required him to practically wrap himself around her and Gaz fired a white crystal shaped bolt at the flying alien's stomach. The creature turned inside out from the wound, before it even hit the ground and bubbled into an awkward mess.

Gaz recoiled in disgust, but then she started laughing, her whole body shook from the convulsions of her diaphragm. Zim could feel the tremors running up his arms, and through his torso. The sensation tingled across his muscles, and every other thought eased away.

When her laughter died down, he typed in another setting, and the leftover goop of the stingray bird, was replaced with a fuzzy, prickly looking rodent. And he handed Gaz a grenade. This time he didn't have to explain, this was a human weapon, and clearly labelled "tear gas". Gaz pulled the pin, and lobbed the chemical weapon across the room, through the smoke she could see the rat-creature convulse, and bleed lime-green ooze from every pore before it lay dead. Still Gaz laughed, and her golden brown eyes sparkled.

Zim leaned back, watching her enjoyment. Without a doubt, it was the perfect outing; even if they hadn't gone anywhere. Did that make it an inning? Zim would have to ask Gaz for language clarification once she had regained her sense of hearing.

Then her golden brown eyes locked onto him, her laughing died, except for one gentle huff of air. Then she purposefully strode over, and put her palm against his face, bringing her lips to the other side, and kissing his cheek. Then, before he could find an appropriate, non-vocal, response, Gaz turned on her heel and marched to the elevator.

He hadn't even gotten to show her the brain-cell experiment she requested.


End Mission Log


A/N: And because I haven't actually had Zim explain it, the stingray creature is the Juxivram, mentioned earlier as having a painful sting. It has a belly full of helium which helps it to float, which is rapidly cooled by a dry-ice gun. The prickly rodent is meant to be one of the slaughtering rat people from Blortch, whose weakness to tear gas was discovered between Skoodge and Zim sending each other random mail.