By animeninjaNIPPON
Twenty years earlier…
"My Tallest! My TALLEST! My – "Zim began.
"What now, Zim?" Red groaned. "You were SUPPOSED to be on that one planet…Rith, was it?"
"I think it was Earth," Purple corrected.
Red narrowed his eyes. "Isn't that what you said about Vort?"
"No, that was something else."
"Oh."
Zim flashed a cheesy grin. "Ah yes, about Earth…Well, forgive me, my Tallest, but I'm afraid I'll need backup – to COMPLETELY DESTROY those smelly Earth-monkeys!"
"Uh…" Purple began as Red sipped a soft drink. "…No."
"PLEASE, my Almighty Tall Ones!" Zim begged, hands clasped together.
"First of all," Red stated, "You blew up our backup troops. Second, we never sent you on any mission to invade Earth. We were just trying to send you as far away from us as Irkenly possible. But now that you've defied our orders by landing within 200 light-years of us, we're turning you back over to Sizz-Lorr."
On cue, Sizz-Lorr came in to drag Zim away. "But WHYYYY!"
"Hey, we cut you a break before," Purple snapped at the annoying non-Invader.
"So the short, ugly guy was right," Zim realized. "NOOOOO!"
As Sizz-Lorr hauled him away, Zim saw the Tallest turn to face a purple-clad female. "Invader Tak," Red said, "you have passed the test."
"In fact," Purple added, "you've done so well that we think you could actually make some use of that planet Zim was supposed to be on."
"But first," Red continued, "we're sending you to…"
"CURSE YOU, TAK!" Zim yelled as he was forced behind the register in one of the many fast food joints on Food Courtia. "YOU WILL PAY!"
"Uh…" mumbled the alien at the front of the line. "How many monies?"
"Two hundred," Zim replied.
The next day, the "foodening" began. Sizz-Lorr took a much needed vacation, while Zim was stuck in that Food Courtia restaurant for the next twenty years. As soon as the foodening ended, he burst through the emergency exit in the storeroom and hijacked the first ship back to the Tallest.
"My Tallest!" Zim crash-landed into his leaders' private snack bar. "I served my time on Food Courtia, now PLEASE let me become an Invader again!"
"What do you mean, 'served your time'?" Red sneered. "I don't believe I ever issued an end to your sentence."
"Besides, we already sent Tak on your phony mission," Purple stated. "Only she's on an actual invasion."
"Oh, I see…" Zim took three steps back, then pulled a gas grenade out of his PAK and threw it at the ground between himself and the Tallest. "NOBODY messes with ZIIM!"
As soon as the smoke cleared, he was gone.
-----
"And what about your robot?" Dib asked.
"Gir stayed on Earth, posing as a squirrel until I got back," Zim replied. "We spent the last two days moving my base COMPLETELY underground, which is where we are now."
"Don't you think someone would have noticed a squirrel that big?" Dib glanced at the robot, who was playing with a rubber piggy.
"That's NOT important now!" Zim grabbed Dib by the trench coat collar. "I need a PLAN!"
"Well…" Dib took out the mysterious notebook once again. "This thing here might have some ideas…"
End of part ten