[Author's note: As for the time setting, I put this somewhere near the end of Season II, when Tak would have returned and Skoodge would be living in Zim's basement. Had Season II been made, that is. *Sighs* Anyway, thought I'd explain because that's going to become relevant to this chapter.]
Zim marched, stiff-legged, down the stairs of his base. Violet followed, glancing all around. She looked innocent, but she was mentally compiling how everything she saw could be turned into a weapon if need be. Such was the world she'd been raised in.
Zim threw down a pile of blankets. "You can sleep on Skoodge's air mattress. He's away on a trip anyway."
Violet peered in the room, barely bigger than a closet. "How am I supposed to fit in there?" she asked, whimpering a bit. She was rather tall and rather long, if not thickly built.
"Oh, you're talented," Zim chuckled. "You'll figure something out."
Violet made a rather rude Irken gesture behind his head as he strutted off, frowning to herself. "That guy's completely oblivious to everything," Violet muttered. "Can I possibly have the right base?" she pulled out her electronic scan pad and flipped through her directions. "No… I have the right coordinates… and that's certainly not Murderer Zim or I'd be dead right now… that has to be Invader Zim…" Violet frowned and put away her electronic pad. Zim wasn't like she remembered him at all.
On Monday at Skool, Murderer Zim put his heinous plan into action. "It occurs to me," Justin purred, sucking from a juice box as he leaned up against the side of the brick building. "That the school mixer is coming up. Pft, what a lame event."
All the other popular kids, standing in a half circle around him and looked bored as well as stuffed with free meat products, nodded weakly. "So, I've decided to throw my own party, at my cousin's mansion. We can play music that doesn't SUCK."
That gathered nods of approval. "However, I want it to be more than just a boring mixer! I want style! I want substance!" Justin threw down the juice box and struck a pose. "I want… science fiction!"
The popular group stared at him, uncomprehending what they'd just heard. "Don't you get it? Theme parties are what's cool in Los Angeles, New York, all the places that are SO much cooler than here. Or do you guys want to just have another lame mixer with the Chicken Dance, because in that case you might as well go to the school dance. You're not welcome at my party, which is where anyone who isn't a," he cast a disapproving gaze over at Zim, who was sitting alone. Dib and his broken fist were no where in sight. "Freak," Justin finished.
The group shuddered. Justin had given the ultimate in elementary threats: loss of coolness. "So what do we do at a theme party?"
Justin smiled over his glasses. "Go all out! You guys bring costumes, I'll get my dad to have a couple of his Hollywood friends to loan us space ships on strings, servants in robot costumes, the whole works." He smiled. "Of course, there'll be a prize for best costume… a chance to go see the Barnstorming Boys backstage, with me as your guest."
That, of course, was far more appealing to the girls than the boys. But even the popular boys wouldn't dare say they had a different taste in music than anyone else. To do so would be equivalent to sitting with Zim at lunch.
Justin looked up, catching Tak's eyes for just a moment as she crossed the playground. That morning, when he'd awakened, his arms had been empty, and she'd been behaving as if last night had never even happened. He sighed deeply, trying not to feel the wounds tearing at his heart. Why did women have to be so… difficult? She'd slapped him hard enough to leave a bruise that morning, and all he'd tried to do was get a peep at her in the dust shower. Was that so wrong? She should have been honored! It meant he liked her!
"See you guys tomorrow!" Murderer Zim called. Justin had made up a clever excuse about his mom making him come home right away to help her with some things. Tak walked ahead of him, her head down and her purple-black hair hanging in front of her face.
Frustrated, Murderer Zim sped up and matched pace with her. "Why are you avoiding me?" he hissed. "What's your problem?"
She looked up at him, her eyes hard, and then her arms dropped to her sides. "I shouldn't have come to Skool. I'm not… fully healed yet," she said, gripping her side for emphasis.
He put an arm around her shoulders. "Don't keep fighting, you stubborn girl! Your safety is more important than your pride. Here, hold still."
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
He hefted her up in his arms, shifting and jiggling her around until he had a good grip on her. "I'm NOT going to let you walk home."
"Put me down!" she shouted, thrashing around like a fish out of water. "I can walk!"
"You're sweating like a pig and you can barely breathe. I'm carrying you."
"Pigs don't sweat. What about your army?" she sneered. "What if they see you together with the freak."
Murderer Zim paused. "Forget them. I don't need an army when I have you."
Her eyes were blank for a moment, then filled with rage like he'd never seen before. He didn't have time to protect himself before she slammed a fist straight into his left eye. He dropped her, howling in pain and holding his face.
Tak grabbed her books up out of the dirt. "I can walk myself home!" she snapped, storming off.
Murderer Zim sat in the dirt. "What did I say?" he whined out loud.
He was still pondering that when the doorbell rang. "Eh?" Murderer Zim muttered, strolling over to the door and peeping out of it. The small, pale boy from school stood outside the door. He looked both awkward and nervous at the same time. Switching on his costume, Murderer Zim peeped out the door. "What do you want?"
"No butler?" Dib asked sarcastically.
"No. No butler. Answer the question."
Dib held up a small, unlabelled CD. "I have more than one Zim bloopers reel," he said quietly.
Back at Zim's base, Violet was fascinated with the blender. Before it had broken down she'd blended up two smoothies, three bananas, ice cream, a goldfish, and two unfortunate frogs.
After getting bored with that, she'd made some "minor" adjustments to the robot parents. The mother now spoke exclusively Spanish swear words. Violet wondered if perhaps this were the reason why she'd been assigned to Spork's torture chambers. When left alone, she made things torturous on everyone else. Spork had discovered that on the first day he'd had her around. Left alone in his bedroom while he attended to royal business, she'd made a quilt out of his underwear.
She noticed the little green dog thing kept coming and going. Maybe if she followed him, she'd see something interesting…
At the same time, Skoodge had just arrived home. There wasn't room in Zim's attic for his ship, so he'd had to park in the tops of a fake tree. He wouldn't have honestly minded, if not for the bloodthirsty squirrels that always seemed intent on biting his ankles.
Two of them were still attached to him as he did a little dance, trying desperately to free himself from them in the backyard. Violet, forgetting her complete lack of disguise, snatched up a heavy frying pan and ran into the yard.
"Back, you ankle biting beasts!" she shouted, swinging wildly. One of her swings missed; the second swing hit a squirrel directly in the head. Watching the dazed squirrel retreat, Violet pumped her fist in the air. "Yeah, run in retreat you fat-tailed rat pests!" She looked down at Skoodge, who was rubbing his aching legs.
"You okay?" she asked, helping him to his feet.
His eyes filled up with tears. "No… no one's ever… helped me before."
Violet shrugged and swung the bloodied pan over her shoulder. "No problem. I wasn't just going to stand by and watch those mammals chew your legs off!"
"Thank you… thank you! My name's Skoodge."
"Violet," she informed him shortly as she returned into the house. "Zim has me sleeping in your bed, but I'm actually glad you came back. I don't fit in your bed."
He looked at her long legs. "I'd imagine not," he mused. "I'm sure Zim can find a better place to put you if he really tried!"
Violet smiled. "You really think so? Thanks." She paused. "So, when are you going to ask me out?"
Skoodge sputtered on the soda he'd just opened, spitting half of it down his shirt. Not that his shirt wasn't already covered in small stains and grease. "Ex… excuse me?"
"Guys always ask me out when they see me. Never fails. Stupid antennae, stupid eyelashes!" she sighed.
Skoodge paused, biting his lip. "I wasn't going to ask you out… you'd never go out with someone as short as me."
"Now, if I did that, I'd be just as shallow as the guys who only want to go out with me because I'm tall, and I'd like to think I'm better than that," Violet huffed, her hands on her hips.
"So… do you want me to ask you out or not?" Skoodge asked, his stubby round eyes flickering with confusion.
There was a long, overly thick pause. "No," Violet finally said.
Skoodge started to turn away. Just as he thought. No matter what she said, he was just too short and too fat for…
"I don't want you to ask me out because I'm asking you out." She took his fat little hand in her thin one, kneeling down to him. "Call it my way of apologizing for judging you the way I hate to be judged."
The only thing that prevented Skoodge from turning to a puddle of goo in Violet's luscious arms was Zim arriving home right then, slamming the door hard enough to bring about a long string of Spanish swearing out of the robot mother.
"More popcorn, Dib?"
"Are you kidding? I'm still stuffed with that pizza!"
Murderer Zim laughed. "I want to see the one, the one where he's teaching GIR how to be a real dog and GIR buries him again!" Murderer Zim choked, his face wet with happy tears.
Dib, holding his rib cage, smiled. "Let me… let me start breathing again…"
"Oh man! You could sell these tapes and make a MINT, man, a MINT!"
"But no one ever believes it's a real alien…"
"I'm not talking about on EARTH! Do you know how much these would go for on Irk?"
"He's right, you know," Tak added quietly. She'd been keeping her distance from them, tightening wires on MiMi to install the new memory disk. Even Dib could sense the tension between the two of them, but he didn't know the cause of it. He wasn't sure he could ask what the cause was without getting smacked around again.
Her dark purple eyes met Dib's as she looked up. "You know, our tallests didn't order Zim to destroy your planet. They sent him here to get rid of him."
The hard edge never left Dib's eyes. "But you destroy other planets. You make prisoners out of former friends."
"So does your country, Dib, and if your people were a planet I'm sure they would too." With that, Tak went back to work on MiMi.
"Don't mind her… she's mad and won't tell me why," Murderer Zim whispered. "I thought it was because I took over her base without asking, but I offered to give it back and she just screamed at me and went back to tinkering on MiMi."
"Oh," Dib said, for lack of knowing what else to say.
"She's telling the truth, though. In fact, I bet our leaders would throw you a parade back on Irk if you bumped off Invader Zim. They can't stand his guts."
"I'd be a hero?" Dib asked, visions of grandeur dancing in his head.
"They certainly would, but you've got to consider… they've been trying to kill Zim and failing at it for years. It's not an easy task. But if the three of us work together," he said, glancing at Tak, "Then…"
"Anything is possible," Dib finished. To heck with the parade, think of the validation he'd feel upon delivering Zim's alien corpse to the non-believers at Nasaplace and in the Swollen Eyeballs. Think of the looks on their faces as he presented the alien technology he'd ask the alien leaders for as a reward. The fame, the glory… and most of all, everyone would have to say that he was RIGHT.
And that was worth more than all the gold in the world to young Dib.