Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim-clk-on't own Invader Zim-clk-on't own Invader Zim-clk SKRRRRTCH! Jhonen Vasquez does.
The Light Stuff in the Middle
Intending to stop Zim from entering the shopping maul, Dib ran around and around it as fast as his injuries would allow. Every time he went to slow down, he was seized by the sudden conviction that Zim was at that very second slipping through the doors on the opposite side and put on a fresh burst of speed. Consequently, Dib was quite out of breath by the time he actually spotted Zim, approaching from about a half a block away and marching stiffly along the sidewalk toward the shopping maul as if leading a column of millions of others just like himself.
Dib paused long enough to shout at the alien, "Your plans will fail, Zim! I'm here to see to that!" before hurling himself forward once again.
Zim stopped to return the challenge. "Pi-ty-full doomed Hu-uma-an! You dare to oppose the unstoppable military might of Zi-ii-iiim?"
Dib leaped in front of a metal lamp post, defending it from the menacing alien invader. "That's right! I DO 'oppose the unstoppable military might of Zim!'"
Seeing Zim draw some kind of bulky and multi-colored indescribable space weapon, Dib crouched, preparing to jump just in case the weapon didn't misfire this time. By the time Zim fired, Dib had already jumped aside.
Zim's laser burned a small black-edged smoking hole about the size of a quarter clear through the metal pole of the lamp post. Had Dib chosen to stand behind the pole instead of in front of it, he wouldn't have seen the need to jump... and that smoking hole would now be running not only through the lamp post, but though Dib himself as well.
Outraged at having missed his target, Zim now began to rail at Dib. "Stu-upid huma-an! To-oo stu-upid to kno-ow that superior Irken military technology NEVER misses!"
As Zim ranted, Dib took advantage of this brief interval to reach under his trench coat for the net to hurl over Zim. Zim dodged just in time as Dib saw the net settle harmlessly over the fire hydrant Zim had claimed by similarly leaping in front of it.
Dib seized the edge of the net more firmly to throw it over Zim, but as it was still draped over the fire hydrant, he found himself yanked him backwards against the metal object. Losing his balance over a fire hydrant wouldn't usually have been such a big deal, but Dib groaned aloud as the metal edge bit with special venom into his previous bruises.
"Puny hu-uman!" gloated Zim. "If it hurts you that much when its fire ISN'T lit, imagine the agony that awaits you once the mighty stomping boot of Zi-ii-iiim subjugates your filthy inferior planet!" Zim ran through a long list of threatening predictions, each more horrific than the one before it, while Dib rubbed his fresh injury.
Right when Dib reached once more for the net, Zim reached the end of his rant. "I cannot loiter here any longer, Dib stink! I must go on to complete my mission. Why am I not shooting you full of ho-oles even now? Because I want you to beho-old ALL the DOOM I am going to rain on the DOOMED heads of your filthy DOOMED race! I want you to SEE the heap of smouldering DOOMED ashes your mightiest and most sacred edifice, this DOOMED shopping maul, will be... and your DOOMED Almighty Richest taken prisoner! AH HAH HAH HAH HAH!"
As Zim turned on his heel and left Dib shouted after him, "You'll never get away with this!" In his panic Dib kept turning the twine the wrong way and getting it still more tangled; peeling the net off the fire hydrant cost him precious seconds while Zim continued his marching into the shopping maul full of people.
Finally the net came free and Dib, his breath back, took off pelting after Zim as fast as he could.
Falling against the fire hydrant wouldn't have been much in itself, but that fresh bruise on top of the ones Gaz had placed there earlier was agonizing. Holding a hand over the spot where the pain most sharply stabbed through him with every step, Dib thought grimly that Gaz had sure picked a lousy time to compromise the speed and strength of earth's sole defender.
At last Zim had taken the final step that placed him inside the walls of that gleaming fortress, the human shopping maul. It had fallen without firing one single shot; seeing him approach, laser gun levelled at their puny glass doors, the humans had surrendered as soon as he stepped on the rubber mat and immediately opened the doors FOR him! On Irk the Tallest had slaves whose sole duty was opening and closing the doors as they entered or left each room; the humans had already set slaves aside for Zim for this very purpose! The stupid, weak-kneed humans milling all around him were just asking to be conquered. What a puny planet. If it weren't for the Dib he couldn't have claimed even that one brief battle.
Zim now looked around greedily at this concentration of outposts of earth's Almighty Richests. Where, oh where to unleash first the full fury of his unmerciful military might? The plastic store? The ring store? The paper store? The computer store? The sound store? Some human in the latter was warbling some nonsense about the absurdity of putting out fire with gasoline. Even the Dib human had tangled himself up in his own net! Humans did such stupid things it was a wonder they hadn't all exterminated themselves before the mighty Zim arrived to enslave them for some useful purpose.
Noticing something resembling a map, Zim stalked up to it. The humans had cleverly hidden the maul directory right in front of the doors but Zim's military genius had led him straight to it nevertheless! Zim's eye went straight to the largest square and immediately he decided that only the biggest store of all was worthy of doing battle with the mighty Zim! Once that fell, all the others would surrender like the puny earth drones that they were. Quite often the most impressive solution is also the most efficient, Zim told himself with satisfaction, locating the You Are Here star before setting off to subjugate the Almighty Richest of the planet earth.
Passing under a sign with an arrow pointing toward the "Food court," Zim shuddered and jerked his eyes back to his path. Later. Zim made a mental note that after taking over the maul, his very first order of business would be to vent the sharpest edge of his mighty vengeance upon its own Food Courtia.
When Dib finally made it inside the doors, he ran around through the crowd for a few moments flailing his arms in desperate bewilderment. Where in this huge sprawling behemoth of a maul could he possibly think to start looking for Zim?
Finally he slowed down enough to remember about the directory, and went over to it for a clue. Well, where else WOULD the little megalomaniac be headed BUT the biggest store in the place? Ducking and dodging shoppers excited about new purchases, seniors enjoying an evening stroll, families trying to keep track of each other, couples walking hand in hand, and wandering maulrats, Dib tore off as fast as he could toward the maul's flagship store, fervently hoping and praying he wasn't already too late.
Once inside the giant bay doors of the biggest store in the maul, Zim marched imperiously up to the first uniformed foot soldier he saw. Occupied by the order his superior officer had given him, this foot soldier was hard at work pulling one pair of sneakers after another out of a large cardboard box and with a gun of his own was attaching price tags to each pair before arranging them along a rack.
He didn't even look up at Zim's approach. This was never Zim's favorite way of winning, but a military victory was still a military victory. Playing dead never got an enemy shown mercy yet. Zim frowned with grim determination as he recalled the old Irken war motto... If it lies to you, make it lie still.
Zim stomped his boots right up to this soldier, aimed the laser at his back and commanded, "Surrender, DOOMED earth scum or be STOMPED by the mighty boot of Zi-ii-iiim!"
Uhhhh... right. The employee turned to barely glance at Zim, showing him heavy lidded, sleepy brown eyes, five o'clock shadow, and a name tag reading, "I am here just to serve you! Call me Mike!" Mike shook his head; this wouldn't be the easy shift he'd come in hoping for after all, not if the crazies were coming out this early.
"You dare to refu-uu-uuuse?" Zim cocked the weapon and lifted it to point to where Mike's brainmeats were. "Surrender NOW pity-ful DOOMED hu-uu-uman!"
Faced with so terrifying a threat, Mike now roused himself enough to look up from his task and wave to another uniformed soldier, this one a female, who immediately came over. Two had surrendered already; this would be more of a pushover than even Zim's genius had anticipated!
"Donna what's the best way to deal with this?" Mike asked, with a brief gesture of his thumb in Zim's general direction.
Perky and pony-tailed, Donna winked at Zim, which he knew was some kind of human signal but couldn't imagine what she could tell him that he didn't already know. "Already? I told you some night shifts would be like this!" she said to Mike before catching the eye of a third soldier to wave him over as well. What was this? The humans couldn't line up to turn themselves in fast enough!
This third soldier was a little older and his name tag read "Supervisor." Once he sent out the order to surrender, it would be all over; Zim would be forced to go and untangle the Dib human if he was ever to be tested with an actual fight!
"Look who flew in here tonight!" said Donna to Supervisor, grinning as if her entire planet wasn't DOOMED.
Much as he wanted to laugh out loud, Supervisor choked it back. So little about this position challenged him any more that he actually welcomed bizarre incidents like this one breaking up a slow shift. He'd milk this amusing interlude for all it was worth and recall it for a good chuckle after things went back to the same boring old routine. This wasn't even a case of a child pilfering stock; not even while clowning around in their own toy department had he ever seen a gun that ridiculous.
"'Take me to your leader!'" Supervisor said for the spunky kid aiming that laughable object at him and gritting teeth that looked for all the world like a zipper. I don't know where he got that costume, but I could sure use one like it next Halloween! "Well, our CEO is the highest leader we've got to offer you, little buddy. But he's in a galaxy far, far away, sorry... but I CAN take you to all of the leaders of this particular asteroid!"
Zim pushed the point of the laser closer to Supervisor. "If you lie to the great Zi-ii-iiim by a single step, hu-uma-an, your DOOMED inferior earth organs shall be splattered all across your DOOMED inferior low earth ceiling."
"Doomed and inferior, gotcha." His shoulders shaking with barely suppressed laughter, Supervisor indulgently lifted his hands high above his head before doing a brisk about face. As Zim drove his helpless, quaking prisoner along, Supervisor led him out of the shoe department, through hardware, past electronics, appliances and finally large furniture, before showing him the wall of framed pictures next to the stairs leading up to the administration floor. With a parting pat on Zim's head, he said, "There, now, kid, any leader you want! They're all lined up like a shooting gallery so you can pick 'em off one by one! Have fun!"
Supervisor turned to head back to his own department, visualizing the kid aiming that ridiculous gun at the photograph of the Footwear Manager, a humorless, strictly by the book nitpicker for whom he nursed a particular dislike. Calling up an even more cathartic mental image of the genuine individual twitching like a marionette while being zapped full of holes, Supervisor barely made it to a king sized Rest In Peace box spring and mattress, on special that week
for only 999. Collapsing onto the bed, he buried his mouth into one of the pillows thrown in for free and unleashed roar after booming roar of laughter.
Even half a department store away, the laughter that got past the pillow put wings on Dib's feet. By this time he had heard that sound under unpleasant circumstances so often that unless he knew for sure what was so funny, he expected the worst. By the time Dib reached him, Supervisor was sitting up on the bed breathlessly wiping tears out of his eyes.
"Oh, no! I'm too late! Zim's already shot somebody!" Dib ran straight up to the shattered, hysterical eyewitness and gasped, "Quick! Where did he go?"
Immediately guessing who this kid was talking about, Supervisor indicated the company's organizational chart on the wall nearby, assuming Zim was still pointing that toy gun at the portraits. Dib raced up the nearby stairs, that unmistakable voice now galvanizing him still further. He followed the sound up a steep flight of stairs and down a cheaply panelled hall, tracking it down to a door with the words "General Manager" painted in white on its smudged glass window.
End of Part Two