*pantpantpant* zee chaptair eez complete! Thank you all for your kind feedback :) Already starting on chapter 4. Don't worry.
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The next two days were uneventful as far as skool days went, though Zim was certain it was like Dib and his sister were breathing down his neck a bit more than usual. Dib would harrass him in class, that much was expected at that point, but then on the playground or the lunch tables, Gaz would seek him out and just sit there, near him, bemusedly playing her Game Slave until his lip nervously twitched with each click of the buttons. The irken, quite frankly, didn't know what to make of her behavior, but found it to be very unnerving...but then, he had come not to like humans' company in general very much.
And now, Gaz sat across from him in the cafeteria, busily playing her video game adaptation of Rework The Dead as Zim tried to busy himself with choking down a few bites of the human slop on his plate. His throat protested mightily, trying to upheave the spoonful of creamed corn he had taken, but he forced it down nonetheless. Once he had recovered, his eyes settled on Gaz. What did she want? She never gave a reason or excuse for following him. She was always just....THERE. A long uncomfortable silence followed with the underlying drone of Gaz's Game Slave. At length, she raised her eyes to look at him. Reflexively, he glared at her until she reverted to her entranced state.
"Why are you here?" Zim snapped at last.
"Free country." she replied flatly. "And its REALLY cheesing my brother off." Upon hearing this, Zim cast a look at the table that Dib and Gaz usually occupied and found the earth boy to be sitting alone, fists clenched with a plastic spork in one of them and glaring daggers in the irken's direction. "Wanna come over after school and see if we can get him to have a conniption?" she offered.
"I've no time to meddle in your human conflicts." Zim replied disinterestedly as he eyed his carton of milk suspiciously, sniffing at the contents and wincing slightly as he took out his matter scanner, running it over the strange substance to see how it it could possibly be safe for consumption.
"I've got the new Neo Anole game for the SlaveMaster." she added, trying to sweeten the deal. Zim sniffed to show his apathy toward her statement. Gaz gritted her teeth behind her thin lips. What kind of loser turned down a chance to play a SlaveMaster, alien or not?
"Let me see if I have your logic straight, wormbaby. You seek to annoy your brother by annoying me?" Gaz shrugged in reply.
"That's about the gist of it, yeah." she answered.
"FOOL!!" Zim clenched his fist. "You trifle with powers you cannot possibly understand! You and your puny race are alive merely on my whim! At any given moment, I could SQUASH you like a bug!" saying so, he clenched one spindly fist around his milk carton, showering himself in the contents. He froze, milk dripping down his face and puddling around him on the floor. If he was to count his blessings at this point, it was that it wasn't water, at the very least.
"Meet me down at McStucky's after school. We could get a couple of freezies." Gaz told him.
"I will NOT be seen in public with earth scum!" Zim vowed, pointing accusingly at her as he wiped milk off of himself with his free hand. "And besides..." he added as an afterthought. "I don't have any money."
"I just got my allowance, Zim..." she muttered, putting the Game Slave on pause. "But mark my words...if you don't pay me back, you will forever writh in COMPLETE AND TOTAL AGONY!!" her voice took on a horrifying and forboding tone as she delivered her last line, and then, in her completely normal tone: "So how about it?" the irken debated a moment, making some hasty mental calculations. "Its not like its a date or anything."
"Well....alright..." he muttered, sounding incredibly unsure. Upon hearing this, Gaz hopped up and walked away from the table, not looking up from her game as she went. As she had hoped, she was closely followed by her brother's scurrying footsteps and frantic questions.
"What was that all about?? Gaz, talk to me!!" he implored. "Gaz..." his voice shifted to threatening, shaking his finger at her. "I DEMAND that you tell me!" When that had no effect, he switched to another tactic. "If you don't tell me, I'll..." he paused to think. "I'll tell dad you're communicating with alien lifeforms!!" her pace didn't slow one iota as she kept going. "C'mon, Gaz!!!" he wailed, chasing after her out of the cafeteria and onto the playground. Zim watched them go, feeling a trifle sick. He didn't like freezies and he didn't like Gaz. Combine the two, and he wasn't sure WHAT he was in for.
And she certainly seemed to be going out of her way just to irritate Dib. Then again, Zim decided that if Dib was HIS brother, he'd probably go out of his way to irritate him as well. It was kind of funny when you got down to it...the way his eyes would get twice their size, and how he'd grind his teeth....he reminded Zim of one of those Slaughtering Rat People the Tallest had threatened the troops with many a time. It made him smirk just thinking about it. Alright then...he'd humor her. If nothing else, suffering through an afternoon with a smelly human would be nothing compared to Dib's agony when he saw them in close proximity. "I will destroy him...." Zim grinned, inwardly cackling.
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The school day seemed to last forever until, at long last, the bell rang and children eagerly piled into the buses and their parents' cars. Dib felt himself snarl as he watched Zim ascend the bus stairs and sit near the front in an empty seat. He would keep his sister away from that creature...even if he had to do it manually.
"So...ahh..Gaz! Heh.." Dib stated awkwardly, grinning a bit too broadly at his sister who was still sitting beside him. She hadn't notice Zim get on the bus as she was too enthralled in beating level forty three of Rework The Dead. "Ya know what? I'm having a bit of trouble getting past the ice caverns on Stonekeep. Think maybe you could help me out when we get home?" He hoped this would attract her attention and, above all keep her from noticing Zim.
"I've got plans." she answered flatly.
"Aheh...really!" Dib forced a dry chuckle. "What...ahem...sort of plans?"
"Me and Zim are going out." she replied. Dib's jaw fell agape as he found himself unable to speak for several moments.
"To...do....what?" he asked with some difficulty.
"None of your business." she snapped as she looked up and noticed Zim sitting near the front. "I'm gonna go."
"No Gaz! Don't!!" Dib implored, grabbing her around the waist as she stood, eliciting a startled squeal from his younger sister before she turned to glare at him, trembling with rage and eyes widening to show their dialated purple irises. "I mean..." Dib's eyes darted guiltily to the floor and back up to her face. "I...want to watch you play your Game Slave!!" Gaz's arm drew back and then connected mightily with Dib's face, sending him sprawling back against the bus window before she sat back down.
"Fine." she spat. "But don't ask me any annoying questions."
All the way home, Dib pretended to be completely entranced with Gaz's gaming skills, applauding her strategies for making it through the levels, and every once in awhile shooting Zim a triumphant glare. The irken seemed a bit puzzled in the times he had caught Dib's accusing eyes on him but paid it little mind. His mind was preoccupied with what would happen shortly. Being seen in public...with a human...GAZ no less, had effectively daunted him into fretting.
"Just as long as I refrain from making her angry, I'll be fine." he assured himself. Damn, he had so many other things he'd rather be doing with his afternoon. He had yet to send the Tallest his bi-weekly report on his mission and no doubt they were on the edges of their seats to learn more about his findings. The house needed its weekly disinfecting, Gir had a system short-out that needed tending to...but no. His afternoon would be occupied at this McStucky's organization.
The idea occurred to him, yet again, to simply not go. And just as quickly, the image of that Gaz creature breaking down his door with murderous intentions pushed this idea straight out of his head. It may just be a friendly gesture, but he doubted it. He doubted everything about these humans. As the bus rolled to a stop on his street, Zim hurriedly hopped up and left, eager to be away from Gaz for now.
He scurried up the walkway and slammed the door to his home, leaning against it as though the demons of hell themselves were on his heels. He assured himself, yet again, that he would be fine. .....But what if he wasn't? What if this was a plan of Gaz's to expose him to everyone? "Calm down." he said aloud, removing the wig from his head and wringing it in his hands. Even if she did reveal him, he could destroy himself and protect the Irken race. He HAD been given that option after all....though it seemed, more often than not, the Tallest had been more than eager to try and get him to "test" his button just to make sure he hadn't been given a faulty one.
He took a deep, cleansing breath and slumped his shoulders a bit, attempting to relax.
"MASTER'S HOME!!!!!!" a voice that was undenyably Gir's, shrieked as the costume-clad SIR unit darted from wherever it had been hiding and pounced Zim as best as it could, wrapping its stubby metal arms about Zim's waist. "Mastermastermastermastermaster!!! Guess what *I* did today??" he asked in a voice that was almost entirely too fast to be understood.
"Made it possible for me to be laughed at by a room full of stinking earth weasels?" he snarled, recalling Gir's handiwork on his poetry homework.
"Nooooo." Gir giggled. "I fed your tape player toothpaste!!" Zim cringed, gritting his teeth.
"You...!!! Why did you do that???" he asked, just below screeching level.
"Cuz I couldn't find the syrup." the robot answered as though it was the most obvious answer in the world. Zim felt his fists clench so tightly that his fingers dug into the pads of his palms and threatened to draw blood.
"Nevermind!" he declared suddenly. "I don't have time for this! I'll deal with you later, Gir!" he vowed, shoving past his robot assistant and into the kitchen where he quickly lifted the seat to the toilet marking the entrance to his underground lab and stepped inside. Within moments, he was flushed beneath his house via a transport tube. As his boots hit the floor, Zim shed his "human" disguise and bustled toward the main computer console. Sending his report to Red and Purple wouldn't take more than a few minutes...and if Gaz got testy about him being late, he could use the excuse that he had been "powdering his nose", as humans liked to say instead of just coming right out and stating that they needed to evacuate themselves. He paused a moment and shook his head. No, that wouldn't work either....he didn't have a nose to powder.
He sifted through a nearby pile of papers before emerging with a disk in his grasp that contained all of his findings for the past two weeks. It occurred to him briefly, that aside from the passing words he had exchanged with his tallest over his months spent on earth, they never once gave him any feedback about his findings on Earth or its inhabitants. "They're busy Irkens." he assured himself. "I'm sure that they're spending every moment of their spare time studying my findings. This was a very special mission, after all."
Zim slipped the disk into a protective glass sleeve so that the strain of transport wouldn't scratch it and then hurriedly punched in a series of keys on the control pad.
"Request to contact Irk sent. Awaiting reply." the computer informed him. Zim took a deep breath, standing at his full height and putting on his best "official" face (which looked as though he had just bitten into a lemon.) There was a crackling of dead static for a long moment. "Accepted. Opening channel now." the computer informed him, and a moment later, the image of Purple and Red crackled onto the screen.
"What is it NOW, Zim?" Red muttered, rolling his eyes. Purple stood behind him, head rested on one spindly hand as he regarded the monitor with little interest.
"My tallest!" Zim exclaimed, his antennae twitching hurriedly in salute. "I've come to deliver my latest findings on this planet, Earth!" he stated. "I think you'll find these to be especially interesting."
"Yeah, yeah, sure Zim." Red replied, stifling a yawn. "Just zap it on up here and then go do....Zimmy....things." he faltered, waving his hand dismissively. Zim, refusing to acknowledge the blatant disinterest, triumphantly placed the disk onto the transfer platform and watched as it disintegrated into tiny pinpricks of light as it was beamed up to Irk. On the monitor, it appeared before Purple and he tweezed it between his thumb and forefinger, looking at it as though it were a dead insect.
"Yes, yes, I'm sure it will be prove to be very fascinating." the purple-eyed irken sighed, carelessly tossing it over one shoulder.
"Now, if you don't mind, we have stuff we need to get done up here." Red told him, and then quirked his fingers to slash the air with invisible quotation marks. "SECRET MISSION stuff."
"I understand fully, Sirs!" Zim replied eagerly, mistaking their evasive attitudes for them wanting to review his research privately where they could concentrate better. "Zim, over and out!" As the connection was terminated, Zim smiled, feeling good about himself. Then again, talking to the tallest always made him feel better....reminding him that he DID have a purpose.
Now it was time to get to the other matter at hand, meeting Gaz at McStucky's.
"Computer!" he commanded. "Locate this "McStucky's" place of business and give me its exact coordinates."
"Processing..." it said in a gentle female voice...and then abruptly cleared its mechanical throat, reverting back to its baritone male voice. "PROCESSING SIR!! OH HOW I PROCESS!!" it screeched. Zim cringed, making a mental note to run a virus scan on its database when he returned home. There was a whirring sound and then a soft blip as a mapscreen came up, a blinking red beacon showing Zim's destination. It appeared to be within a few blocks of his place of residence.
"Excellent." the irken nodded. "It shan't be a long journey at all." he wrung his hands, grinning.
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Gaz slapped two dollars down on the counter as the clerk, an obese man who spoke broken english, handed her a Chocolate/Strawberry Freezy Swirl. "You gots...." he paused, punching random numbers on the cash register's keypad. "....fiddy-siz cent change!" he announced proudly, pulling two quarters, a nickel, and a penny and thrusting them back at her. Gaz muttered a thank you and shoved the coins into her pocket, shuffling out the door and out front to wait a bit longer.
How long could it possibly take that idiot to go home, toss his bookbag on the couch, and get his alien green butt down here, after all? He was probably dinking around in some secret lab or something. Or maybe Dib had tried to break into his house using his "advanced technology" mail-ordered directly from sci-fi magazines and as she waited, Zim had him pinned to an examination table, impaled by hundreds of dissection needles. The thought, as entertaining as it was, didn't even make her crack a smile. The fact was, she was out in the hot sun waiting for him...and if he didn't show up soon, he was going to know the definition of pain next time she saw him.
As this thought finished itself, she heard shuffling footsteps and looked up, seeing what looked to be a very short old man dressed in rags and dragging a familiar-looking green puppy along behind himself. As she inserted the straw in her lips and began the excruciating process of attempting to hoist the frozen Freezy up the narrow shaft far enough to taste it, she overheard said old man muttering obscenities to himself about how blasted hot it was and how his beard itched. The voice was familiar too, actually.
"Where have you been, Zim?" she spat sourly before he had even begun his initial approach.
"Fool!" Zim hissed, scurrying up to her and clamping a hand over her mouth. "How did you know it was me?? You cannot recognize Zim!!!"
"Mmphmrrphh..." Gaz muttered irately behind the irken's gloved fingers before reaching up, throwing his hand angrily aside and wiping chocolate/strawberry mix off of her top lip.
"Touch me again, and there won't be enough left to identify your corpse." she threatened. "And that disguise is even worse than the one you use at skool."
"Its ingenius!!" he countered, leering at the earth girl and daring her to say otherwise again.
"Whatever." she reached into her pocket, withdrawing a handful of change and thrust it at the alien. "Go get your stupid freezy and bring me the change." she instructed. He opened his mouth to say something in protest, but at length, felt his jaw go slack as he closed it again. Maybe later...it wouldn't be a good idea to test her at the moment, he decided. Not out in public. Wordlessly, he accepted the money and disappeared inside. Gaz sat back and waited, reclining on the bench.
"Hi!" a voice squealed. She looked beside her to see that Zim, in his haste to go inside, had forgotten Gir who sat beside her, still dressed in his green dog suit, dangling his feet over the edge of the bench and swinging them idly. "Whatcha doin'?" Gaz slapped her forehead, not in the mood to make small talk, least of all with an annoyingly loud robot. As she did so, Gir took a sudden interest in his leash, giggling as he whipped the air with it like a pint-sized Indiana Jones and then, giggling like a madman, began to jump rope with it.
Zim returned a moment later, a large freezy clutched in his hands. He had never partaken of one of these freezy creations before...the way he saw it -- frozen, boiled, liquified, burnt, all human slop was the same. He held in his hands something affectionately titled "The Suicide". As near as he could figure it, all it was was a concoction of a little of every flavor of freezy the machine had to offer. He had yet to try it, but already knew he wasn't going to like it as he sat down on the other side of Gaz as Gir rigged up a rudimentary "vine" with his leash and swung down the back of the bench with a hearty tarzan whoop.
"Change." Gaz ordered, holding out a pale hand. Zim, grumbling under his breath, drew the coins out of where he had concealed them, much to the confusion of the store clerk, in his false beard, and dumped them into her waiting palm. Gaz studied the amount handed back to her for a moment, and, seemingly satisfied, tucked it back into her pocket.
"So tell me, creature..." Zim growled, swirling the multi-colored frozen liquid around in the paper cup he had been given. "....why it is that you've demanded I alter my schedule of events to sit pointlessly?" there was a beat of silence as he clenched a fist and held it up dramatically. "My time is valuable." he said in as low and threatening of a voice as he could muster.
"Maybe I like you." she replied sharply. Zim's eyes widened in shock and was at a loss for words very briefly. "But since I don't, maybe I just needed an excuse to get out of the house." Relief washed over Zim after hearing this. The last thing he needed was one of these earth beasts inflicting their fickle emotions upon him. She took a deep breath, but instead of letting out a sigh, the words "Life sucks." escaped her lips.
"Feh." Zim snorted in reply. "You earthlings have no idea what torture and pain truly is. Always with your cheap coffee houses and pitious sheep's whining..." the irken sounded highly resentful as he said this.
"Yeah but YOU'VE never been on student counsil." she replied, jabbing a finger at Zim's shoulder. "And its bad enough my brother won't give me a minute to myself outside of class, but then you add in that I get to spend the rest of this week's lunch periods sitting in a room of giggling ditzes wondering if the school dance's decorations should be blush pink or deco pink---" her grip got tighter and tighter until her freezy simply burst in her hand, sending clumps of brown and red slop all over the bench.
"Dance?" Zim inquired, wiping the generous portion of freezy that had landed on his face away with the back of his hand.
"Yeah." she muttered sullenly. "And if that isn't bad enough then there's this freak---"
"HIYA GAZ!!!" a squeaky voice exclaimed. Gaz's face went slightly red and her eyes narrowed as a young, overweight boy with black hair strode out of McStucky's clutching a grape freezy and a TinglNut bar in one hand.
"Nrrghhhh..." she snarled with disgust as he approached the bench, scrambling up beside her and seemingly oblivious to the fact that he had plopped directly onto Gir who screamed and struggled beneath his massive buttocks.
"Ya wanna share my candy?" he asked, waving the red-wrappered candy bar in her face. Gaz shied away from it as though it was a wasp and then lurched forward, giving him an immense shove. Zim could almost swear that the pavement vibrated as the sack-of-guts human hit it.
"Get lost, Rich." she hissed. "I'm afraid if you hang around, I might inhale your fat cells and choke to death."
"Ehehehe..." he grinned widely. "I like a girl with a sense of humor." he grinned, showing off his garrish braces, snorted, and then wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. Gaz cringed in utter disgust. "So, .Gaz!" he said to break the silence. "There's...umm...a dance!"
"And....?" she asked, her voice dripping with venom.
"Ya goin' with anybody?" Rich pressed, approaching her. Gaz recoiled, wrinkling her nose up in extreme distaste.
"I wouldn't go with you if I had a festering disease and you possessed the only known cure." she spat. Rich laughed in reply, a high-pitched unnerving giggle that it seemed only overweight computer nerds were capable of.
"Why not??" he demanded, stomping a foot. "My mom says I'm cool!"
"Because." she answered simply. "I'm going with Zim." Zim, nearby, still in his old man disguise, had been sampling a small mouthful of his "Suicide" and spat it unceremoniously in Rich's face as he heard these words.
"WHAT??" the irken and Rich shrieked at roughly the same time. The fat boy seemed unaware of the freezing slush dripping down the sides of his face and into his shirt.
"The green foreign kid??" Rich squealed. "Are you NUTS????"
"Get lost." Gaz replied disinterestedly, casting her eyes to the sidewalk.
"You PITIFUL fool!!!" Zim shrieked, leaping to his feet and pointing an accusing finger at Gaz. "Zim does not have time for your horrid earthling dances!!" He noted the fact that Rich was goggling at him as though he was insane and remembered that he was supposed to be in disguise as he slowly sank back in his seat. "I mean...ahh...if I KNEW this Zim fellow, of course...eheh..." he stated awkwardly.
"Gaz..." Rich tried to appeal as Gaz slid down from her seat on the bench and attempted to walk past him.
"You talk to me again...." she said in a low voice, seizing him by his shirt collar. "and your own mother is going to pass you by on the street by the time I'm done." and saying this, she shoved him backwards, stomping away. Rich watched her go, his immense bottom lip trembling. Zim had decided to take this opportunity to apprehend Gir and retreat to a safe distance as he felt a rather unsavoury rant building and thought it best to do it under the seclusion of his own roof.
As his feet pounded against the pavement, Gir shrieking in joy under his arm as he thought he was being taken for a ride, Zim fumed. He supposed it was his own fault, really, for agreeing to be drawn out with such a ridiculous request as to "go out for Freezies" with some horrid earthling in the first place, but she had shoved him a few thousand paces over the line when she had volunteered him to be her escort for this skool gathering she had spoken about. How could she? How could she DARE???
He quickly rounded the corner to his block, his white strap-on beard coming askew on his face and his battered hat threatening to fly off if he ran much faster, but he didn't care. He felt absolutely filthy as though millions upon millions of tiny earth viruses were invading his system. He wanted nothing more than to go home and thoroughly disinfect himself and stay hidden in his basement laboratory until this "dance" was over and done.
The irken's breath wheezed in and out of his lungs by the time he had reached his walkway as he hurried up the concrete path and into the sanctity of his base. As the door slammed behind him, he threw his head back and screamed. It reverberated satisfyingly back at him from all corners of the house as he dropped Gir to the floor and stomped inside.
"The gall! The absolute NERVE!!!" he cried. "To think that someone of my importance to a top secret irken mission could spare an earth pig even a moment of my time!" the irken angrily kicked at the side of the couch, instantly doubling over in pain and hopping on one foot. As he did so, his telephone rang shrilly nearby. Zim froze, the pain in his toes momentarily forgotten. Who the hell....? He scurried forward and seized the phone. "Hello...?" he asked tentatively.
"If you tell anybody what happened today, Zim, I'll destroy you." Zim had just enough time to register in his mind that it was Gaz's voice before there was a sharp click and the connection was gone. He didn't have time to ask her how she had gotten his number. Hell, HE didn't even know his own phone number. It had just been an added bonus the computer databases had placed in his home to make it more believably a human's. An inkling of hope surfaced in the irken then. Maybe she had only volunteered him because she had wanted to get out of an uncomfortable situation with the hippo-like human that had approached them at McStucky's. Perhaps she didn't plan on attending the dance at all. Well...for her sake, he hoped so. With a final shudder, Zim hurried into the kitchen and down into his laboratory via the toilet port. He needed a long, hot, cleansing.
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Gaz hung up the phone with a sigh and headed in the direction of the upstairs. Mercifully, Dib had been nowhere to be seen. She hoped he was in his room on the internet. With any luck, he'd be ensconsed in a meaningful chat about UFO's and the fact that an alien was in his very own classroom with some other wide-eyed idiots he'd never meet face-to-face from another state. She wondered if he had told them about the time he had sworn up and down that the movie, ET, was really a sworn documentary and had run out of the theater screaming when he was six and cowered in the women's bathroom for an hour.
Now that she thought about it, why was she on the student counsil anyway? She hated skool, she hated the students, and, well, everything about it. Why was she on a committee that focused on nothing BUT that rattrap? Oh yes, now she remembered. She had signed up because her teacher had appealed to the class by saying that all members would be able to skip out on their fourth period class every Thursday. Since Gaz's fourth period was Math, she had readily snapped up the offer...but found herself wondering if it was worth it.
Her attempt to con her way out of being asked to the dance with Rich by stating that she had already said yes to Zim had landed her in a bigger mess than she had started out in. A random Shakespeare quote surfaced in her head tauntingly. "O what a tangled web we weave, when we practice to decieve"
"Shut up, you old hack." she sneered as she meandered into her room. As a member of student counsil, she was obligated to go to the stupid dance. She hadn't been obligated to bring a date, but it looked as though that's precisely what she'd be doing. Well, whatever. Zim wasn't entirely unpleasant company, she thought to herself. It could be worse. MUCH worse. The thought of Rich's many quivering jelly rolls hanging out of the bottom of his T-shirt made her feel momentarily ill as she slammed her door shut and took a deep breath. It was only one night. It would work out.
Things would be just fine.
TBC.....
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The next two days were uneventful as far as skool days went, though Zim was certain it was like Dib and his sister were breathing down his neck a bit more than usual. Dib would harrass him in class, that much was expected at that point, but then on the playground or the lunch tables, Gaz would seek him out and just sit there, near him, bemusedly playing her Game Slave until his lip nervously twitched with each click of the buttons. The irken, quite frankly, didn't know what to make of her behavior, but found it to be very unnerving...but then, he had come not to like humans' company in general very much.
And now, Gaz sat across from him in the cafeteria, busily playing her video game adaptation of Rework The Dead as Zim tried to busy himself with choking down a few bites of the human slop on his plate. His throat protested mightily, trying to upheave the spoonful of creamed corn he had taken, but he forced it down nonetheless. Once he had recovered, his eyes settled on Gaz. What did she want? She never gave a reason or excuse for following him. She was always just....THERE. A long uncomfortable silence followed with the underlying drone of Gaz's Game Slave. At length, she raised her eyes to look at him. Reflexively, he glared at her until she reverted to her entranced state.
"Why are you here?" Zim snapped at last.
"Free country." she replied flatly. "And its REALLY cheesing my brother off." Upon hearing this, Zim cast a look at the table that Dib and Gaz usually occupied and found the earth boy to be sitting alone, fists clenched with a plastic spork in one of them and glaring daggers in the irken's direction. "Wanna come over after school and see if we can get him to have a conniption?" she offered.
"I've no time to meddle in your human conflicts." Zim replied disinterestedly as he eyed his carton of milk suspiciously, sniffing at the contents and wincing slightly as he took out his matter scanner, running it over the strange substance to see how it it could possibly be safe for consumption.
"I've got the new Neo Anole game for the SlaveMaster." she added, trying to sweeten the deal. Zim sniffed to show his apathy toward her statement. Gaz gritted her teeth behind her thin lips. What kind of loser turned down a chance to play a SlaveMaster, alien or not?
"Let me see if I have your logic straight, wormbaby. You seek to annoy your brother by annoying me?" Gaz shrugged in reply.
"That's about the gist of it, yeah." she answered.
"FOOL!!" Zim clenched his fist. "You trifle with powers you cannot possibly understand! You and your puny race are alive merely on my whim! At any given moment, I could SQUASH you like a bug!" saying so, he clenched one spindly fist around his milk carton, showering himself in the contents. He froze, milk dripping down his face and puddling around him on the floor. If he was to count his blessings at this point, it was that it wasn't water, at the very least.
"Meet me down at McStucky's after school. We could get a couple of freezies." Gaz told him.
"I will NOT be seen in public with earth scum!" Zim vowed, pointing accusingly at her as he wiped milk off of himself with his free hand. "And besides..." he added as an afterthought. "I don't have any money."
"I just got my allowance, Zim..." she muttered, putting the Game Slave on pause. "But mark my words...if you don't pay me back, you will forever writh in COMPLETE AND TOTAL AGONY!!" her voice took on a horrifying and forboding tone as she delivered her last line, and then, in her completely normal tone: "So how about it?" the irken debated a moment, making some hasty mental calculations. "Its not like its a date or anything."
"Well....alright..." he muttered, sounding incredibly unsure. Upon hearing this, Gaz hopped up and walked away from the table, not looking up from her game as she went. As she had hoped, she was closely followed by her brother's scurrying footsteps and frantic questions.
"What was that all about?? Gaz, talk to me!!" he implored. "Gaz..." his voice shifted to threatening, shaking his finger at her. "I DEMAND that you tell me!" When that had no effect, he switched to another tactic. "If you don't tell me, I'll..." he paused to think. "I'll tell dad you're communicating with alien lifeforms!!" her pace didn't slow one iota as she kept going. "C'mon, Gaz!!!" he wailed, chasing after her out of the cafeteria and onto the playground. Zim watched them go, feeling a trifle sick. He didn't like freezies and he didn't like Gaz. Combine the two, and he wasn't sure WHAT he was in for.
And she certainly seemed to be going out of her way just to irritate Dib. Then again, Zim decided that if Dib was HIS brother, he'd probably go out of his way to irritate him as well. It was kind of funny when you got down to it...the way his eyes would get twice their size, and how he'd grind his teeth....he reminded Zim of one of those Slaughtering Rat People the Tallest had threatened the troops with many a time. It made him smirk just thinking about it. Alright then...he'd humor her. If nothing else, suffering through an afternoon with a smelly human would be nothing compared to Dib's agony when he saw them in close proximity. "I will destroy him...." Zim grinned, inwardly cackling.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The school day seemed to last forever until, at long last, the bell rang and children eagerly piled into the buses and their parents' cars. Dib felt himself snarl as he watched Zim ascend the bus stairs and sit near the front in an empty seat. He would keep his sister away from that creature...even if he had to do it manually.
"So...ahh..Gaz! Heh.." Dib stated awkwardly, grinning a bit too broadly at his sister who was still sitting beside him. She hadn't notice Zim get on the bus as she was too enthralled in beating level forty three of Rework The Dead. "Ya know what? I'm having a bit of trouble getting past the ice caverns on Stonekeep. Think maybe you could help me out when we get home?" He hoped this would attract her attention and, above all keep her from noticing Zim.
"I've got plans." she answered flatly.
"Aheh...really!" Dib forced a dry chuckle. "What...ahem...sort of plans?"
"Me and Zim are going out." she replied. Dib's jaw fell agape as he found himself unable to speak for several moments.
"To...do....what?" he asked with some difficulty.
"None of your business." she snapped as she looked up and noticed Zim sitting near the front. "I'm gonna go."
"No Gaz! Don't!!" Dib implored, grabbing her around the waist as she stood, eliciting a startled squeal from his younger sister before she turned to glare at him, trembling with rage and eyes widening to show their dialated purple irises. "I mean..." Dib's eyes darted guiltily to the floor and back up to her face. "I...want to watch you play your Game Slave!!" Gaz's arm drew back and then connected mightily with Dib's face, sending him sprawling back against the bus window before she sat back down.
"Fine." she spat. "But don't ask me any annoying questions."
All the way home, Dib pretended to be completely entranced with Gaz's gaming skills, applauding her strategies for making it through the levels, and every once in awhile shooting Zim a triumphant glare. The irken seemed a bit puzzled in the times he had caught Dib's accusing eyes on him but paid it little mind. His mind was preoccupied with what would happen shortly. Being seen in public...with a human...GAZ no less, had effectively daunted him into fretting.
"Just as long as I refrain from making her angry, I'll be fine." he assured himself. Damn, he had so many other things he'd rather be doing with his afternoon. He had yet to send the Tallest his bi-weekly report on his mission and no doubt they were on the edges of their seats to learn more about his findings. The house needed its weekly disinfecting, Gir had a system short-out that needed tending to...but no. His afternoon would be occupied at this McStucky's organization.
The idea occurred to him, yet again, to simply not go. And just as quickly, the image of that Gaz creature breaking down his door with murderous intentions pushed this idea straight out of his head. It may just be a friendly gesture, but he doubted it. He doubted everything about these humans. As the bus rolled to a stop on his street, Zim hurriedly hopped up and left, eager to be away from Gaz for now.
He scurried up the walkway and slammed the door to his home, leaning against it as though the demons of hell themselves were on his heels. He assured himself, yet again, that he would be fine. .....But what if he wasn't? What if this was a plan of Gaz's to expose him to everyone? "Calm down." he said aloud, removing the wig from his head and wringing it in his hands. Even if she did reveal him, he could destroy himself and protect the Irken race. He HAD been given that option after all....though it seemed, more often than not, the Tallest had been more than eager to try and get him to "test" his button just to make sure he hadn't been given a faulty one.
He took a deep, cleansing breath and slumped his shoulders a bit, attempting to relax.
"MASTER'S HOME!!!!!!" a voice that was undenyably Gir's, shrieked as the costume-clad SIR unit darted from wherever it had been hiding and pounced Zim as best as it could, wrapping its stubby metal arms about Zim's waist. "Mastermastermastermastermaster!!! Guess what *I* did today??" he asked in a voice that was almost entirely too fast to be understood.
"Made it possible for me to be laughed at by a room full of stinking earth weasels?" he snarled, recalling Gir's handiwork on his poetry homework.
"Nooooo." Gir giggled. "I fed your tape player toothpaste!!" Zim cringed, gritting his teeth.
"You...!!! Why did you do that???" he asked, just below screeching level.
"Cuz I couldn't find the syrup." the robot answered as though it was the most obvious answer in the world. Zim felt his fists clench so tightly that his fingers dug into the pads of his palms and threatened to draw blood.
"Nevermind!" he declared suddenly. "I don't have time for this! I'll deal with you later, Gir!" he vowed, shoving past his robot assistant and into the kitchen where he quickly lifted the seat to the toilet marking the entrance to his underground lab and stepped inside. Within moments, he was flushed beneath his house via a transport tube. As his boots hit the floor, Zim shed his "human" disguise and bustled toward the main computer console. Sending his report to Red and Purple wouldn't take more than a few minutes...and if Gaz got testy about him being late, he could use the excuse that he had been "powdering his nose", as humans liked to say instead of just coming right out and stating that they needed to evacuate themselves. He paused a moment and shook his head. No, that wouldn't work either....he didn't have a nose to powder.
He sifted through a nearby pile of papers before emerging with a disk in his grasp that contained all of his findings for the past two weeks. It occurred to him briefly, that aside from the passing words he had exchanged with his tallest over his months spent on earth, they never once gave him any feedback about his findings on Earth or its inhabitants. "They're busy Irkens." he assured himself. "I'm sure that they're spending every moment of their spare time studying my findings. This was a very special mission, after all."
Zim slipped the disk into a protective glass sleeve so that the strain of transport wouldn't scratch it and then hurriedly punched in a series of keys on the control pad.
"Request to contact Irk sent. Awaiting reply." the computer informed him. Zim took a deep breath, standing at his full height and putting on his best "official" face (which looked as though he had just bitten into a lemon.) There was a crackling of dead static for a long moment. "Accepted. Opening channel now." the computer informed him, and a moment later, the image of Purple and Red crackled onto the screen.
"What is it NOW, Zim?" Red muttered, rolling his eyes. Purple stood behind him, head rested on one spindly hand as he regarded the monitor with little interest.
"My tallest!" Zim exclaimed, his antennae twitching hurriedly in salute. "I've come to deliver my latest findings on this planet, Earth!" he stated. "I think you'll find these to be especially interesting."
"Yeah, yeah, sure Zim." Red replied, stifling a yawn. "Just zap it on up here and then go do....Zimmy....things." he faltered, waving his hand dismissively. Zim, refusing to acknowledge the blatant disinterest, triumphantly placed the disk onto the transfer platform and watched as it disintegrated into tiny pinpricks of light as it was beamed up to Irk. On the monitor, it appeared before Purple and he tweezed it between his thumb and forefinger, looking at it as though it were a dead insect.
"Yes, yes, I'm sure it will be prove to be very fascinating." the purple-eyed irken sighed, carelessly tossing it over one shoulder.
"Now, if you don't mind, we have stuff we need to get done up here." Red told him, and then quirked his fingers to slash the air with invisible quotation marks. "SECRET MISSION stuff."
"I understand fully, Sirs!" Zim replied eagerly, mistaking their evasive attitudes for them wanting to review his research privately where they could concentrate better. "Zim, over and out!" As the connection was terminated, Zim smiled, feeling good about himself. Then again, talking to the tallest always made him feel better....reminding him that he DID have a purpose.
Now it was time to get to the other matter at hand, meeting Gaz at McStucky's.
"Computer!" he commanded. "Locate this "McStucky's" place of business and give me its exact coordinates."
"Processing..." it said in a gentle female voice...and then abruptly cleared its mechanical throat, reverting back to its baritone male voice. "PROCESSING SIR!! OH HOW I PROCESS!!" it screeched. Zim cringed, making a mental note to run a virus scan on its database when he returned home. There was a whirring sound and then a soft blip as a mapscreen came up, a blinking red beacon showing Zim's destination. It appeared to be within a few blocks of his place of residence.
"Excellent." the irken nodded. "It shan't be a long journey at all." he wrung his hands, grinning.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gaz slapped two dollars down on the counter as the clerk, an obese man who spoke broken english, handed her a Chocolate/Strawberry Freezy Swirl. "You gots...." he paused, punching random numbers on the cash register's keypad. "....fiddy-siz cent change!" he announced proudly, pulling two quarters, a nickel, and a penny and thrusting them back at her. Gaz muttered a thank you and shoved the coins into her pocket, shuffling out the door and out front to wait a bit longer.
How long could it possibly take that idiot to go home, toss his bookbag on the couch, and get his alien green butt down here, after all? He was probably dinking around in some secret lab or something. Or maybe Dib had tried to break into his house using his "advanced technology" mail-ordered directly from sci-fi magazines and as she waited, Zim had him pinned to an examination table, impaled by hundreds of dissection needles. The thought, as entertaining as it was, didn't even make her crack a smile. The fact was, she was out in the hot sun waiting for him...and if he didn't show up soon, he was going to know the definition of pain next time she saw him.
As this thought finished itself, she heard shuffling footsteps and looked up, seeing what looked to be a very short old man dressed in rags and dragging a familiar-looking green puppy along behind himself. As she inserted the straw in her lips and began the excruciating process of attempting to hoist the frozen Freezy up the narrow shaft far enough to taste it, she overheard said old man muttering obscenities to himself about how blasted hot it was and how his beard itched. The voice was familiar too, actually.
"Where have you been, Zim?" she spat sourly before he had even begun his initial approach.
"Fool!" Zim hissed, scurrying up to her and clamping a hand over her mouth. "How did you know it was me?? You cannot recognize Zim!!!"
"Mmphmrrphh..." Gaz muttered irately behind the irken's gloved fingers before reaching up, throwing his hand angrily aside and wiping chocolate/strawberry mix off of her top lip.
"Touch me again, and there won't be enough left to identify your corpse." she threatened. "And that disguise is even worse than the one you use at skool."
"Its ingenius!!" he countered, leering at the earth girl and daring her to say otherwise again.
"Whatever." she reached into her pocket, withdrawing a handful of change and thrust it at the alien. "Go get your stupid freezy and bring me the change." she instructed. He opened his mouth to say something in protest, but at length, felt his jaw go slack as he closed it again. Maybe later...it wouldn't be a good idea to test her at the moment, he decided. Not out in public. Wordlessly, he accepted the money and disappeared inside. Gaz sat back and waited, reclining on the bench.
"Hi!" a voice squealed. She looked beside her to see that Zim, in his haste to go inside, had forgotten Gir who sat beside her, still dressed in his green dog suit, dangling his feet over the edge of the bench and swinging them idly. "Whatcha doin'?" Gaz slapped her forehead, not in the mood to make small talk, least of all with an annoyingly loud robot. As she did so, Gir took a sudden interest in his leash, giggling as he whipped the air with it like a pint-sized Indiana Jones and then, giggling like a madman, began to jump rope with it.
Zim returned a moment later, a large freezy clutched in his hands. He had never partaken of one of these freezy creations before...the way he saw it -- frozen, boiled, liquified, burnt, all human slop was the same. He held in his hands something affectionately titled "The Suicide". As near as he could figure it, all it was was a concoction of a little of every flavor of freezy the machine had to offer. He had yet to try it, but already knew he wasn't going to like it as he sat down on the other side of Gaz as Gir rigged up a rudimentary "vine" with his leash and swung down the back of the bench with a hearty tarzan whoop.
"Change." Gaz ordered, holding out a pale hand. Zim, grumbling under his breath, drew the coins out of where he had concealed them, much to the confusion of the store clerk, in his false beard, and dumped them into her waiting palm. Gaz studied the amount handed back to her for a moment, and, seemingly satisfied, tucked it back into her pocket.
"So tell me, creature..." Zim growled, swirling the multi-colored frozen liquid around in the paper cup he had been given. "....why it is that you've demanded I alter my schedule of events to sit pointlessly?" there was a beat of silence as he clenched a fist and held it up dramatically. "My time is valuable." he said in as low and threatening of a voice as he could muster.
"Maybe I like you." she replied sharply. Zim's eyes widened in shock and was at a loss for words very briefly. "But since I don't, maybe I just needed an excuse to get out of the house." Relief washed over Zim after hearing this. The last thing he needed was one of these earth beasts inflicting their fickle emotions upon him. She took a deep breath, but instead of letting out a sigh, the words "Life sucks." escaped her lips.
"Feh." Zim snorted in reply. "You earthlings have no idea what torture and pain truly is. Always with your cheap coffee houses and pitious sheep's whining..." the irken sounded highly resentful as he said this.
"Yeah but YOU'VE never been on student counsil." she replied, jabbing a finger at Zim's shoulder. "And its bad enough my brother won't give me a minute to myself outside of class, but then you add in that I get to spend the rest of this week's lunch periods sitting in a room of giggling ditzes wondering if the school dance's decorations should be blush pink or deco pink---" her grip got tighter and tighter until her freezy simply burst in her hand, sending clumps of brown and red slop all over the bench.
"Dance?" Zim inquired, wiping the generous portion of freezy that had landed on his face away with the back of his hand.
"Yeah." she muttered sullenly. "And if that isn't bad enough then there's this freak---"
"HIYA GAZ!!!" a squeaky voice exclaimed. Gaz's face went slightly red and her eyes narrowed as a young, overweight boy with black hair strode out of McStucky's clutching a grape freezy and a TinglNut bar in one hand.
"Nrrghhhh..." she snarled with disgust as he approached the bench, scrambling up beside her and seemingly oblivious to the fact that he had plopped directly onto Gir who screamed and struggled beneath his massive buttocks.
"Ya wanna share my candy?" he asked, waving the red-wrappered candy bar in her face. Gaz shied away from it as though it was a wasp and then lurched forward, giving him an immense shove. Zim could almost swear that the pavement vibrated as the sack-of-guts human hit it.
"Get lost, Rich." she hissed. "I'm afraid if you hang around, I might inhale your fat cells and choke to death."
"Ehehehe..." he grinned widely. "I like a girl with a sense of humor." he grinned, showing off his garrish braces, snorted, and then wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. Gaz cringed in utter disgust. "So, .Gaz!" he said to break the silence. "There's...umm...a dance!"
"And....?" she asked, her voice dripping with venom.
"Ya goin' with anybody?" Rich pressed, approaching her. Gaz recoiled, wrinkling her nose up in extreme distaste.
"I wouldn't go with you if I had a festering disease and you possessed the only known cure." she spat. Rich laughed in reply, a high-pitched unnerving giggle that it seemed only overweight computer nerds were capable of.
"Why not??" he demanded, stomping a foot. "My mom says I'm cool!"
"Because." she answered simply. "I'm going with Zim." Zim, nearby, still in his old man disguise, had been sampling a small mouthful of his "Suicide" and spat it unceremoniously in Rich's face as he heard these words.
"WHAT??" the irken and Rich shrieked at roughly the same time. The fat boy seemed unaware of the freezing slush dripping down the sides of his face and into his shirt.
"The green foreign kid??" Rich squealed. "Are you NUTS????"
"Get lost." Gaz replied disinterestedly, casting her eyes to the sidewalk.
"You PITIFUL fool!!!" Zim shrieked, leaping to his feet and pointing an accusing finger at Gaz. "Zim does not have time for your horrid earthling dances!!" He noted the fact that Rich was goggling at him as though he was insane and remembered that he was supposed to be in disguise as he slowly sank back in his seat. "I mean...ahh...if I KNEW this Zim fellow, of course...eheh..." he stated awkwardly.
"Gaz..." Rich tried to appeal as Gaz slid down from her seat on the bench and attempted to walk past him.
"You talk to me again...." she said in a low voice, seizing him by his shirt collar. "and your own mother is going to pass you by on the street by the time I'm done." and saying this, she shoved him backwards, stomping away. Rich watched her go, his immense bottom lip trembling. Zim had decided to take this opportunity to apprehend Gir and retreat to a safe distance as he felt a rather unsavoury rant building and thought it best to do it under the seclusion of his own roof.
As his feet pounded against the pavement, Gir shrieking in joy under his arm as he thought he was being taken for a ride, Zim fumed. He supposed it was his own fault, really, for agreeing to be drawn out with such a ridiculous request as to "go out for Freezies" with some horrid earthling in the first place, but she had shoved him a few thousand paces over the line when she had volunteered him to be her escort for this skool gathering she had spoken about. How could she? How could she DARE???
He quickly rounded the corner to his block, his white strap-on beard coming askew on his face and his battered hat threatening to fly off if he ran much faster, but he didn't care. He felt absolutely filthy as though millions upon millions of tiny earth viruses were invading his system. He wanted nothing more than to go home and thoroughly disinfect himself and stay hidden in his basement laboratory until this "dance" was over and done.
The irken's breath wheezed in and out of his lungs by the time he had reached his walkway as he hurried up the concrete path and into the sanctity of his base. As the door slammed behind him, he threw his head back and screamed. It reverberated satisfyingly back at him from all corners of the house as he dropped Gir to the floor and stomped inside.
"The gall! The absolute NERVE!!!" he cried. "To think that someone of my importance to a top secret irken mission could spare an earth pig even a moment of my time!" the irken angrily kicked at the side of the couch, instantly doubling over in pain and hopping on one foot. As he did so, his telephone rang shrilly nearby. Zim froze, the pain in his toes momentarily forgotten. Who the hell....? He scurried forward and seized the phone. "Hello...?" he asked tentatively.
"If you tell anybody what happened today, Zim, I'll destroy you." Zim had just enough time to register in his mind that it was Gaz's voice before there was a sharp click and the connection was gone. He didn't have time to ask her how she had gotten his number. Hell, HE didn't even know his own phone number. It had just been an added bonus the computer databases had placed in his home to make it more believably a human's. An inkling of hope surfaced in the irken then. Maybe she had only volunteered him because she had wanted to get out of an uncomfortable situation with the hippo-like human that had approached them at McStucky's. Perhaps she didn't plan on attending the dance at all. Well...for her sake, he hoped so. With a final shudder, Zim hurried into the kitchen and down into his laboratory via the toilet port. He needed a long, hot, cleansing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gaz hung up the phone with a sigh and headed in the direction of the upstairs. Mercifully, Dib had been nowhere to be seen. She hoped he was in his room on the internet. With any luck, he'd be ensconsed in a meaningful chat about UFO's and the fact that an alien was in his very own classroom with some other wide-eyed idiots he'd never meet face-to-face from another state. She wondered if he had told them about the time he had sworn up and down that the movie, ET, was really a sworn documentary and had run out of the theater screaming when he was six and cowered in the women's bathroom for an hour.
Now that she thought about it, why was she on the student counsil anyway? She hated skool, she hated the students, and, well, everything about it. Why was she on a committee that focused on nothing BUT that rattrap? Oh yes, now she remembered. She had signed up because her teacher had appealed to the class by saying that all members would be able to skip out on their fourth period class every Thursday. Since Gaz's fourth period was Math, she had readily snapped up the offer...but found herself wondering if it was worth it.
Her attempt to con her way out of being asked to the dance with Rich by stating that she had already said yes to Zim had landed her in a bigger mess than she had started out in. A random Shakespeare quote surfaced in her head tauntingly. "O what a tangled web we weave, when we practice to decieve"
"Shut up, you old hack." she sneered as she meandered into her room. As a member of student counsil, she was obligated to go to the stupid dance. She hadn't been obligated to bring a date, but it looked as though that's precisely what she'd be doing. Well, whatever. Zim wasn't entirely unpleasant company, she thought to herself. It could be worse. MUCH worse. The thought of Rich's many quivering jelly rolls hanging out of the bottom of his T-shirt made her feel momentarily ill as she slammed her door shut and took a deep breath. It was only one night. It would work out.
Things would be just fine.
TBC.....