Author's Note: Update time, fan boys and girls! Whew, don't ya just love it when the creative juices flow? I know I do. Before anything kicks off, just a friendly reminder- I am not Tim Burton or Jhonen Vasquez. I love their works and wouldn't mind having either or both of them as a mentor but I have to give them props for using their brainchildren. Of course, those two aren't the only ones behind the genius, but if I start listing now, I doubt the disclaimer will end. So, for the record once again, I am the unaffiliated fangirl writing this story.
"He wasn't so tough," Lock said to Shock and Barrel. "No wonder he can't take over the world."
"Yeah," Barrel added. "No match for these," he said, patting the gun he held.
"I wonder how far up in space he is," Shock said, looking at the sky in the hole Zim left above the door.
"Pretty far," Barrel said just as a screen hovered down to their level.
"What happened?" it asked.
"Oh, man, don't tell me you turned yourself back on," Lock said in an annoyed tone.
"Fail-safe switch. Don't think a few pulled cables can make me completely useless. It took a while, but I'm back," the computer said proudly.
"Can I?" Barrel asked Lock, pointing his gun to the screen.
"Save it," Shock said.
"Why?" Barrel asked.
"Look at the corner of the screen," she said to both Barrel and Lock.
Together, all three of them looked at the bottom left corner of the screen. It seemed to have some kind of box warning written in Zim's language. Shock touched the little box, enlarging it to take up the whole screen. Something was entering the furthest perimeter of the Base. Wait, no, six somethings, all portrayed as circles, one a bit bigger than the others.
"So you really are good for something," Lock said to the screen.
"Might as well give you a head start. You three are going to be blown to bits anyway."
"Thanks," Shock said in a sarcastic tone.
"It's not Zim, there's only one of him," Barrel pointed out.
"It's Zim, GIR, Minimoose, and that big one is Dib," the computer said.
"Why is he so big?" Shock asked.
"Is he a giant?" Barrel asked, feeling a bit scared at the prospect.
"No, but his head is huge."
"What about the other two?" Lock asked.
"I dunno. New DNA, never been here before."
"Uh-oh," Barrel said, vocalizing exactly what Lock and Shock were thinking.
"No. It couldn't be," Lock said.
"But what if it is?" Shock asked.
"Then we'll give him all we've got," Lock said.
"What Zim's got, actually," the computer said, circles on the screen now entering the front yard.
"Quick, let's go down to all the rooms and grab as much stuff we can use," Shock said to the boys, who nodded and ran after her, luckily escaping notice… for now.
"Alright you intruders, get out of my Base!" Zim screamed as he entered, oblivious to the computer screen hiding back into the many cables on the ceiling.
"So much for the element of surprise," Dib muttered.
"Awww, they're not here," GIR said sadly before smiling and plopping himself on the floor to watch TV, Minimoose squeaking in agreement and hovering next to him.
"Tell me again how advanced your minions are, Zim," Dib said with a smirk on his face.
"Shut your noise tube," Zim answered before walking into the kitchen. "Hurry up! The faster you leave, the better."
"Any sign of them?" Sally asked Dib from the doorway.
"No. Quick, we're going into the labs. If you guys can keep Zim busy, I can do some major spying."
"Alright. Jack, let's go in," Sally said.
"But these little men are so fascinating," Jack replied from the outside just before a laser blast shot another hole in the Base's wall. "Coming!" he exclaimed.
"Dib Beast! Get your filthy gigantic head and those inter-dimensional stink creatures over here!" Zim ordered from the kitchen.
Dib sighed and motioned for Jack and Sally to follow him into the kitchen. Both Jack and Sally got quite a shock at seeing a toilet tucked away in the corner of the kitchen where it could be seen. They even more surprised when Zim got in and flushed himself down it.
"Do we-" Jack started to ask Dib, who immediately shook his head.
"He does that just for show. We can go down the trash can, move the couch, move that little dresser by the TV. There are entrances everywhere," Dib said, opening the trash can lid and jumping down it, once his head went completely through, of course.
"Let's look for one that isn't so… steep," Jack said to Sally.
"You're not scared, are you?" Sally asked Jack, who shook his head as he walked back to the front of the house.
"No, no. I just don't want either of us to fall apart when we land," Jack said as he looked towards a closet between the front door and the couch.
"Oh. Thank you," Sally said, watching Jack open the door and then slam it shut. "What's the matter?"
"There are people in there," Jack said. "I think they're people, anyway."
"Why would Zim hide people in a closet?"
"I don't know, but I don't like it."
"Welcome home, son!" exclaimed two voices from the closet.
"Son?" Jack asked, now even more curious. "They're his parents?" he wondered as he put his hand on the knob of the closet door yet again.
"Jack!" Sally exclaimed.
The door seemed to open by itself. Jack had turned intangible just in time to see a pair of manufactured humans roll out into the living room. One was made to pose as Zim's father, with glasses, a pipe, and two mechanical claws for hands. The other was Zim's lab-made mother, who had wheels instead of feet and whose eyes never seemed to line up correctly. If Zim was seriously trying to pass himself off as human, he definitely wasn't doing a good job. However, these RoboParents were good for something.
"Brush your teeth!" the RoboMom said to Jack, who had returned to normal to closer inspect these people.
"What?" Jack asked, watching the RoboMom dig a toothbrush out of her overall pocket.
"I said BRUSH!" she yelled, pouncing on Jack and forcefully brushing his teeth, not realizing that he escaped a few seconds into her tooth-brushing mission.
"I don't think that was toothpaste," Jack said to Sally, coughing into his left hand and seeing one large bacon strip there. "This world gets stranger and stranger."
"Let's just go down the trash can before they try anything else, please, Jack?" Sally asked.
"Alright, but just in case," Jack said before turning to GIR and Minimoose, who were still watching TV. "Could you please distract the closet people?"
"Shhhh. This is the best part!" GIR said, pointing to a filthy monkey growling on the television screen.
"You listen to your mother, son!" ordered the RoboDad before rolling himself into a wall.
"Never mind," Jack said before running into the kitchen with Sally, both going down the trash can to meet up with Dib and Zim.
Meanwhile…
"Stink beasts? STINK BEASTS? Face ZIM!" Zim yelled at random corners as he and Dib walked around the many lab corridors.
"They're not going to come if you call them stink beasts," Dib said. "I don't even know why I think there's a possible chance you can take over the world."
"I'm an Invader, Dib. I can do anything. The only reason I'm not exploding that giant head of yours at the moment is because of those three stink beasts hiding like weasels."
"It's not giant!"
"You're right. It's gargantuan."
"More like mega-gargantuan," said a voice that didn't belong to either Zim or Dib.
"Yeah, and another- what?" Zim asked, turning around to face a slightly taller boy, the one in red with a tail.
"Wanna play hide and seek?" he asked.
"We don't have time for games," Dib said.
"You sure about that?" asked the devilish boy as he pointed a gun at both Zim and Dib.
"We have time, plenty of time," Dib said nervously.
"HA! Maybe you do, Dib! Put that gun down, you don't know how to appreciate something that amazing," Zim said to the devil boy.
"You're right. Maybe this time I'll press the button that makes you disappear for good," he said before catching a glimpse of something. "Later," he finished before running off.
"Come back here, you coward!" Zim yelled.
"Lock? Lock!" Jack's voice yelled as he dragged Sally a little past Dib and Zim. "You let him get away?" he asked the pair in a frustrated tone.
"He had a gun," Dib said.
"And?" Jack asked.
"I'm alive, Jack. I'm scared of guns, they can kill me," Dib elaborated.
"Oh, right," Jack said.
"They don't scare me, I'm Zim," Zim said, crossing his arms and looking at Sally with interest. "Where's your hand, dirt creature?"
"My hand?" Sally asked, raising her left arm and seeing that her hand was indeed missing. "Not again."
"It had better not be doing anything to my equipment, or you will face my iron fists!"
"No, here it comes now," Sally said, pointing with her other hand to the hand walking towards them on its fingertips.
"Disgusting," Zim said in a repulsed manner. "Well, do what you need to and follow me. No stink beast tries to foil Invader Zim with his own weapons," Zim finished, marching off into another corridor.
"Are you missing anything else?" Jack asked Sally.
"No, that's it. You and Dib go ahead, I'll join you when I fix my hand," she said.
"I have a better idea," Jack said before turning to Dib. "Dib, you go ahead. You know this place a lot better than we do. There are three children in here. Sally and I can find one, you can find another, and Zim… well, if he's lucky, he can find the last one."
"And if he isn't lucky?" Dib asked.
"Well, you won't have to worry about the Earth being in peril anymore and I'll leave it at that," Jack said with a sheepish smile.
"See you later, then," Dib said to the pair before running off into the corridor, disappearing into another sector of the Base soon after.
"Need any help?" Jack asked Sally, who was putting the finishing stitches on her left hand.
"It's alright. As long as we don't go down any long falls for a while, I'll be fine," Sally said. "Where are we going to start looking for them?"
"I don't know. This place is a labyrinth. Good thing I convinced Dib to let us stick together. After all that's happened, I wouldn't want to lose you too," Jack said as he threw his arm around Sally's shoulder and began walking with her. "I'm not crossing any boundaries, am I?"
"No. Even if you were, our rules don't apply here, remember?" Sally asked.
Jack nodded and smiled to himself. Sally was warming up to him without acting all flustered and embarrassed? Yep. This definitely was a strange world. But a good kind of strange, at the moment.
Meanwhile…
"The nerve of those people!" Professor Membrane exclaimed to Simmons as they walked back into the lab.
"They didn't even let us sign release forms, sir," Simmons said in an equally insulted tone.
"Wrapping us up in their paranormal nonsense. We are men of real science, not of ghosts and zombies and whatnot."
"It's a crime, sir," Simmons said as they paused at a table with a body under a white sheet.
"What is this?" Professor Membrane asked one of the scientists taking notes over the body.
"An inter-dimensional traveler that didn't escape, amazingly enough. He is number six, sir," replied the note-taker.
"What do you have on him so far?" Professor Membrane said.
"He's brainless."
"Now, now, there is a more professional way of saying a person is slow-witted."
"No, sir. He really is brainless. Have a look," said the note-taker before walking out of the room for a break.
Professor Membrane, now very curious, pulled down the white sheet. He backed away a bit at the sight of the old man lying on the table, with beady eyes hidden under black goggles and lips protruding in a very unnatural way. Then there was the size of his head. It was quite large, perhaps as large as Dib's. Not only that, but there seemed to be a sign of bolts just underneath the skin of his head and under those marks, it was cracked open. Professor Membrane took a deep breath and pushed it back.
It was like opening a lid. The inside of this man's head was bare, no sign of brains or skull. Instead, it was an empty pewter basin, which was where his brain would go. The world where all of these creatures were coming from was certainly odd, to say the least. A skeleton, a fragmented woman, three shadows that belonged to unknown organisms and now a man without a brain? Professor Membrane was so bewildered he nearly fell down, if Simmons hadn't just placed a chair under him.
"Brainless. He really is brainless," Professor Membrane said.
"Astounding, sir," Simmons said.
"No. A bit frightening."
"What are we going to do with him? Is he going to be dissected?"
"Simmons, once all the travelers are gathered and sent home, I want the Dimensional Traveler destroyed."
"Destroyed?" Simmons asked. "But, sir, it is a breakthrough in science!"
"Is it? Look at the monsters it is producing, the things that come out of it when it isn't turned on. Whatever other dimension is out there, it is better off having no contact with this one."
"I understand, sir," Simmons sighed. "But I'm not so sure the rest of the crew will. When will they be informed?"
"When this mess is fixed," Professor Membrane said.
Simmons nodded before recovering the body and giving Professor Membrane some time alone to think. It was supposed to be a way to contact other life forms, beings that could impart wisdom on the human race. Instead, the Dimensional Traveler brought things of terror into the world. What had he done? Professor Membrane looked at a digital clock on the wall and thought of Dib. Now that he had his little green friend, he was surely capable of fetching those creatures, wasn't he? Well, he could always use a little more help. That was what Professor Membrane thought when he dialed his home number from his goggles.
"Hello?" Gaz's voice asked.
"Daughter? Good, you're still home."
"You want me to help Dib with the monster catching, right?"
"If you have time. I hate imposing on you, but you're the responsible one, the one with sense."
"And the funny one."
"Yes. Yes you are," Professor Membrane said, chuckling to himself. "You take care of yourself now. If things get out of hand for all of you, you can always reach me through my goggles."
"Can I earn an extra Family Night for all of this?"
"We'll see."
"Dad," Gaz said in a slightly demanding tone.
"I think I'm less swamped around November, I'm not too sure," Professor Membrane said, knowing just how to negotiate with his daughter.
"Alright, I'm going. Bye, Dad," Gaz said, hanging up the phone.
"Good luck," Professor Membrane said, both to his daughter and himself.
To Be Continued…