At first Zim had to mentally stop and think for a moment, he couldn't have said two weeks... could he? Then, "WHAT!?" Zim screamed so loud that Aneera was practically flung out of bed and an audible 'eep!' was heard from upstairs. "What do you mean two weeks!?"
"Exactly what I said, TWO WEEKS! My fleet is already at the island, I just came here to get you. No go on and pack, WE NEED TO GO!" With that Ara shooed him away and Zim went to go pack his things with a far away expression, this had come on just a little too quickly.
Noah watched as his father went along, he didn't know what he should , he didn't really get what was going in the first place-. "So, what do I need to do?"
Ara thought for a moment but they were interrupted by Kasandra. "What about that flying moose thing?" she asked, looking sweetly at Noah.
"Oh! You mean Minimoose?" As if on cue the little moose came flying into the living room and right into Noah's face, squeaking happily as he cuddled his Master.
"Awww, he's so cute!" Kasandra cooed over the little miniature moose, telling him over and over how adorable he was. And of course Minimoose didn't object, it wasn't often that people actually commented on his cuteness.
Just as Ara was about to open his mouth and scream there was a loud crash that came from upstairs. Everyone looked up and saw Gir running across the landing from Zim's room to Aneera's room, where he smacked into the door and fell down.
"Nooooo!" he screamed, letting tears flow down his metallic cheeks and onto the floor. "Why!? Aahhhh!" After he finished screaming and crying he stood and walked down stairs as if none of that had taken place. "Hi! Whatcha doin'?"
Nobody said anything for fear that the little robot might possibly do that again. Instead they all stared and leaned slightly away, just in case.
"Nya." Minimoose said quietly, then he floated away to find his other Master and see if he needed any help, hoping to get away from Gir.
Ara leaned in closer and stared, he remembered this robot from somewhere, it's spazzyness gave it away. "Why are you so familiar?"
Gir looked up and smiled. "EEEEE! It's Mr. Pointy Ears! HIYA!" He then jumped onto the couch and grinned stupidly at the other, whom he didn't know. "OoooOOOooo, you're pretty!"
Kasandra tilted her head in confusion, "Uhh, thank you?" Then, as sweetly as she could, she shoved the fake S.I.R. Unit off of the couch and went to go find something to do, with Noah quickly following suit.
"So, I'm guessing it's stupid." Kasandra said, as she looked around.
They had wondered off into the labs, not really paying attention to where they were going. The room they had walked into was slightly smaller than the rest and had only one thing in it, a giant computer.
Noah walked over and sat on the little chair and curiously turned it on. "Yeah, but we love him anyways." he replied. The computer booted up fairly slowly, something that greatly annoyed him, he was so used to everything being to advanced and fast, he just wanted to toss this one out the window.
"What are you doing?" Kasandra leaned over Noah's shoulder and peered at the screen, which she noted was positively huge.
"Just looking, I've never seen this computer before." Once the computer was up and running he fished around in some documents and found himself looking through 'recent documents', hoping to find something interesting. "Hello, what's this?" In the recent documents he had found some documents labeled with security codes.
"Looks like somebody was trying to hack into some encoded documents. Wonder where they're from." Kasandra leaned forward and looked closely at the labels, trying to remember where she'd seen those codes before. "Hold on, let me see it for a second." She took the cursor away from him and rolled over one of the documents, holding it there so it would display more info, maybe about where it came from.
Noah sat patiently and watched as she continued to look thoughtfully at different documents. Every once in a while she would scrunch up her face and scowl at the screen, then after another second or two she would sigh and get really annoyed. "Ah ha! Here we go!" Obviously she had found some sort of file that gave more detailed descriptions of the files that were on the computer's hard drive.
"What, what'd you find?" Noah looked sideways and studied her facial expression, she looked pleased. "What is it!?" he asked again, hoping to get some insight on what she was so happy about.
"Look here, it tells you everything, even where the documents originally came from." She scrolled down the screen a little bit until she found the location of the files. "Oh no..." Her eyes widened and she held her breath, standing up straight again.
Noah looked from Kasandra to the screen, he did this a few times before he found what she was fussing about. He skimmed down until it showed the location, and it said 'Document Origin: IRKEN MASSIVE'. "What? That can't be right! Nobody here is able to actually hack into the Massive, it's security is way too tight!"
"Apparently someone was able to do it, because it's been done." As she was saying this she opened the most recent decoded file, hoping that that might give a hint of who might have had the stupidity to actually try something like that. She pulled up what ended up being Zephyre's profile page, but again the info was blacked out. "Huh, how odd."
"What?" Noah looked back at her again.
"Nothing, I was just wondering why somebody would want to see hisprofile page." Kasandra wasn't really surprised, just a little confused.
"Why? What's wrong with him?" Noah was quite confused himself.
Se looked down and smiled. "Oh, I know him, but I can't see why anybody here would have any connection with him... Ah well, we should probably get going, I'm sure you're parents are close to being done."
Noah took one last good look at the Irken on the screen and then shut down the computer. "Okay. Um, could you not say anything 'cause I don't know if I'm allowed to be down here." He smiled sheepishly as they walked back to the lift and headed back up to the house level.
"Sure, I wouldn't do that, I don't want to get in trouble either." Kasandra smiled back and crossed her arms, waiting as the lift continued to rise up. But instead of continuing it stopped at another level where Zink was waiting to get on as well.
"Oh, hey Zink, I sort of forgot you were here, um we have to go." Noah stepped over and let the shorter Irken inside.
"Oh I know, your dad told me. I've been packing. I got to duplicate it about a thousand times already!" This obviously made Zink very happy with herself and she pulled out a small cube with a glowing blue energy emitting from inside.. "They're all in here!" She began to toss it up and down, catching and releasing it repeatedly.
Noah's eyes got wide as he watched the cube go up and down in a rythmical pattern. "You mean that you fit all of those lasers inside of that little thing!?"
Zink's smile only got wider. "Uh huh! It's an infinite matter cube, you could probably fit in there if you wanted to!" Zink held the small contraption out towards Noah, who instinctively leaned away from it.
"Um, no thanks, I'll pass." He gently pushed it back to Zink, who shrugged and held it behind her, letting a single arm reach out and store the cube into her PAK, so that she wouldn't have to carry it herself.
At the sight of the metalic appendage Noah jumped away and backed up against the wall, putting his hands against the wall. He started shaking and his face twisted into what someone would like had they just seen a monster. "What was that thing!?" he screeched.
Zink and Kasandra eyed him with a bit of 'You look like you need some medicine' and then looked at each other for a second. Once they looked back at him he started to get it, that must be normal.
"What do you mean 'what was that'?" Zink was trying so hard to keep a straight face and not laugh.
"I mean, WHAT WAS THAT THING!?" Now he looked a bit put off, he thought they were making fun of him, which they kind of were.
Kasandra looked away while Zink explained. "Do you know what a PAK is? You know, the life support system that all... well with exception of you, Irkens have. Along with keeping us alive it's also good for miscellaneous things, such as storage. Well unfortunately our arms are too short to reach back there so we have these metal arms that do that kind of stuff for us. They're only deadly when they have to be."
Before that last comment Noah had been listening and he remotely understood what she was talking about, but once she said that last sentence he forgot everything else that was mentioned. "Eh? You mean that those things can kill somebody!?" Right about now was when his eyes took up most of his face.
"What, you didn't know that? Jeez, what have you're parents been teaching you?" Zink shook her head and sighed, there was obviously much this child needed to know.
"Well gee, considering I don't HAVE ONE it would be pointless to try and explain it to me, don't you think?" Noah then crossed his arms and squinted, to him, they seemed useless anyways. He was able to function perfectly fine without one! What was the point of explaining it if it had no benefit to him?
Zink eyed him for a moment before dropping the conversation and staying quiet.
The rest of the ride only lasted about ten seconds and when it had reached the ground level everyone stepped off eagerly, Noah going in the complete opposite direction as Zink. Kasandra followed closely behind but watched as Zink went upstairs, took that lift up through the wall and disappeared.
"Hey! Watch where you're going with that thing!" Zim's shout was heard loudly from upstairs and Ara stepped out of his room with a box held tightly in his arms.
"Don't worry, I got it! Besides, it's just a bunch of useless junk anyway!" Ara tilted his head back to aim the comment more directly at the very close to fuming Irken stomping along behind him.
Zim stopped right where he was and scrunched up his face. "It is NOT useless junk! It's very valuable! But I guess you wouldn't know." With that last comment he noticed that his voice got a bit higher pitch and his old attitude was coming back fairly quickly.
Ara smirked at him. "Oh look, it's the almighty Invader Zim! Help me I'm scared!" The he began to laugh and once again began his trekk back downstairs.
"Yeah, you better be!" Zim clenched his fists and squinted his eyes real tight, trying to make himself look menacing, but not really looking any more scary than a puppy with some serious mental issues.
"Aw come on, aren't you gonna do the laugh? Or can you not do it anymore?" Ara looked at him pitifully, he hadn't heard Zim do his evil laugh in years, he was curious to know if Zim was still able to pull that one off.
Zim growled and stuck out his bottom lip. "You dare question me!? Of course I can! Here I go, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" As if pretending he was his old self Zim did actually laugh exactly like he used to when he was younger, even his voice was the same octave it had been, which was pretty weird.
Noah flinched and looked a bit freaked out by this little display, but what happened next had him on the floor crying.
Aneera stuck her head out of her bedroom doorway and looked real surprised. "What just died!?" Now see, the funny part was, she was serious. She had actually thought something had died, via Gir.
While Noah was busy trying not hack up his internal organs Ara was biting his lip, not wanting to put on a show. But poor Zim just stood where he was and hung his head, feeling so embarrassed that it wasn't even worth it to cry.
"I'm serious! It sounded like some old lady!" And still the fits of laughter continued, more violent than before, and she just stood there like a moron.
Now Zim sniffed a little and turned around to look at her. "It wasn't an old lady and nobody died!"
"Well then what was it!?" Now she had migrated to the bottom of the steps, just to make sure Noah would still be able to breath after this.
"It was me." Admitting to that was not easy, especially when the person that you are admitting it to is gonna look at you like you were the most stupidest thing there ever was.
Which was exactly what Aneera did. "What do you mean it was you?"
"That was my evil laugh." he stated simply, feeling no need to try and start some weird argument.
She looked blankly at him, man did she feel stupid. "Oh, I'm sorry!" She ran over and gave him an apologetic hug. "Well it sounded like you were hurting yourself!"
This only made Zim pout even more, he couldn't believe that she, his own wife, had never heard his evil laugh, and then when he did do it she thought something died! "Humph." he said, looking angrily over at the door, which decided to just fly open at that moment.
"Hey guys, need any help?" Dib, of course, walked into the house, but paused when he saw the strange scene before him. "What happened?"
Noah had just recovered from his laughing fit but as soon as Dib asked what had been going on he couldn't help but start up again. "Hahaha! You missed it! IT WAS HILARIOUS!" He was once again on the floor, clutching his stomach.
"What was hilarious?" Dib looked around and tried to understand what was going on, but to no prevail. "I don't get it!"
Ara, not really caring that he didn't know the boy, walked over and stood next to Dib, placing the box at his feet. "Well I suppose it is my fault, I started teasing him," he pointed over at Zim. "I told him to do his evil laugh but when he did... well she thought something died."
Dib had to think for a moment, he remembered that laugh as though he had just heard it for the first time, but it took him a minute to visualize what had happened. "Oh my goodness!" Then he too, began to have a laughing fit.
Aneear looked up and frowned. "It's not funny! I didn't know!... STOP LAUGHING AT ME!" she yelled, now getting a bit put off.
"Relax, we're only havin' fun." Ara smiled sweetly and stopped giggling, then went up to the roof to put to box in Zim's cruiser.
Gaz, who hadn't said a word or even moved during the fiasco, now inched over to the couch and sat down, resuming her ignoring of everybody, that is, until Gir came around.
"Hiya! Did you like your present!? DID YA!? Minimoose and me stayed up all night to make it for you!" Gir jumped onto the couch and started to repeatedly asked questions like these until Gaz had had enough.
She looked up evily from her game, then, with one hand, shoved the little robot off the couch and onto the floor. "Yes." was all she said.
Gir smiled and clapped his hands together. "YAY! GAZZYKINZ LIKED IT!"
Zim had overheard the conversation and decided to invite himself in. "Oh, what'd you get!?"
Instantly Gaz's face turned bright red and she refused to answer, she just kept her head low so that no one could see. It was embarrassing for Gir to talk about it but for Zim to ask what it was? That was pure torture.
"Come on! You wouldn't even tell me!" Dib migrated over towards her but she scooted away from him and hissed, she wanted to be left alone about the subject.
Seeing that there was only one way to do this Zim told the rest to go finish packing, once they were gone he sat as close to Gaz as she would allow. Then he looked at her at smiled. "Really, what was it?"
Once again there was no answer, so he just scooted closer, hoping he could annoy it out of her. Dib had seen what he was trying to do and eagerly joined in, though knowing full well what it meant when they got home, one heck of a pounding.
Gaz started to feel slightly claustrophobic, there were way too many people that were way too close for comfort, but she was cornered. It would have been less traumatizing had she left the thing at home, but now that she had the present with her, that only made it worse. "Go away." she hissed, not taking on eye off her game.
Zim scowled, this wasn't working, so he just scooted closer, but Dib stayed right where he was, not wanting to feel the wrath here and at home. "Why won't you tell us?"
"Because it's none of your business!" With that she turned away from him, but made a grave mistake. She forgot about the trinket, it had been in her dress pocket, and now it had fallen out for all to see.
Zim saw it and quickly, but carefully, snatched it up and dove for the other end of the couch, hoping to get a good look at it before Gaz noticed. He looked down, but he didn't expect what he saw, he saw a small glass statue of himself, perfect in every way possible. He sat up and stared at it, not knowing what to think of it.
He had had it for all about four seconds before Gaz had any realization that it had been gone. She looked down and didn't see it, already starting to feel sick, but when she saw who had it she went numb.
Zim continued to look at it, and then his cheeks started to turn a faint red, and he quickly handed it back to Gaz, now understanding why it was so important.
Dib hadn't said a word since he saw the thing, but after it registered and he knew what it was and why Gaz was so protective of it, he started to giggle. "Wow Gaz, wow."
She looked up and glared so dangerously that he almost peed his pants he was so scared, thankfully he was spared, she didn't feel like evoking her wrath in front of Zim. "You're lucky, you know that?" she spat, now clutching the little trinket protectively in her arms.
"Hey, everything is all packed, come on, we have to leave!" Ara shouted from the landing, jerking his head towards the lift, they were finally ready to leave and prepare for battle!
Aneera: WOOT! It's gettin' good!
Zim: That was not right.
Gaz: You will all pay.
Aneera: I thought it was cute!
Zim: AND YOU! How could you!? You thought my evil laugh sounded like something was dying! You are mean.
Aneera: Yes, yes I am.