By animeninjaNIPPON
"What's THAT?" Zim asked.
"It's the story I was telling you about," Dib explained. "It reveals stuff about you, like your intolerance to water. Maybe we can use it against Tak."
"You mean, I'LL use it!" Zim snatched it away from the big-headed boy. He began reading it from the beginning.
"You can read Earthen writings?"
"Of COURSE! I was HERE before!"
Zim didn't want to admit that he'd spent countless nights of incarceration practicing Earth's many alphabets until the day he got the chance to seek and destroy Tak on said planet. He mopped floors as she fought wars for the past two Irken decades, and somehow he always knew that she would get his mission in the end.
"DONE!" Zim threw the notebook at Dib's abnormally large head.
"Already?" Dib exclaimed. "But I haven't even finished it yet!"
"Well, I got NOTHING out of it! It's all LIES! That stupid, stinking HUMAN knows NOTHING of ZIM!"
Dib flipped through the book a bit. "Well, she was right about your appearance. And the way you talk. And from what I can tell – HOLY CHICKENFOOT, what do we have here!" His eyes bugged out at the line he saw:
It turns out that Tak is an alien…
"It mentions Tak in here!"
"Nothing IMPORTANT about her…" Zim grumbled.
Dib went back a few pages to read the entire entry. Meanwhile, Zim paced back and forth, trying to think of a way to stop Tak.
"OOOO, I se shiny things!" Gir randomly exclaimed from the distance.
"Wha? – GIR! Get out of there!" The little robot had gotten into a box of sporks, carelessly tossing them at arbitrary intervals and directions. Narrowly dodging one utensil, Zim lunged at the box and crashed into it, sending Gir flying to the opposite end of the base.
While Zim chased the dysfunctional robot around the room, Dib had time to go through a good deal of the "Zim Files."
"Gir, ZIM COMMANDS YOU to stop!" Zim yelled.
"Come on, don't you want to play with me?" Gir called from the ceiling, supporting himself with two sporks stuck into whatever material was keeping the roof from caving in.
Tak is gone, but her spaceship landed in my yard just now. I'm going to take it for a test drive… Dib read silently.
Gir did a back flip between the two sporks and landed next to Dib with a crash.
"This isn't funny, Gir! I DEMAND that you follow orders IMMEDIATELY!"
"Ah, but you didn't tag me yet…"
Zim tried to run for skool president today, but lost. I wish he had won, though – then he would have suffered at the merciless hands of the faculty…
"GIR! I ORDER YOU TO COME HERE SO I CAN TAG YOU!"
"Okie-dokie." Gir waddled over to Zim and waited patiently for his Master to tap him on the head. With that done, Gir gave Zim a rather hard push on the shoulder and called, "TAG! You're it!"
"Oh my gosh!" Dib cried suddenly.
"Now what, worm baby?" Zim groaned.
"Look." Dib walked over to Zim, holding up the book in the alien's face. "See this last entry?"
Zim backed away slightly for a better view. "What of it?"
Dib moved the notebook to his own vision and read aloud, "As of tonight, I finally have the means to stop Zim once and for all! I've managed to construct a time machine out of Tak's old ship, and I will go back in time to prevent him from ever walking into skool that fateful day…" He skimmed the next two paragraphs before concluding, "Signed, Vira Mindez – aw, who am I kidding? No one will ever read this but me… Signed, Dib." He closed the book and looked up at Zim. "That's me – I'm Dib! I must have used a pseudonym and gone back in time and – well, you get the idea."
"So, YOU wrote that horrible, inaccurate account of the LIFE OF ZIM?" Zim asked.
"Yeah, I guess," Dib replied.
Zim grabbed Dib by the T-shirt. "Listen up, STINKBEAST! I am NOT 'LIME GREEN;' I am a unique color called 'IRKEN CHARTREUSE'! I'm not stupid; it is YOU HUMANS who are STUPID! And my boot size is NOT six, merely FIVE-AND-A-HALF! And – wait a minute, I shouldn't be telling YOU this! You're trying to DESTROY me!"
"Actually, I have something else in mind." Dib pulled himself free from Zim's grasp. "According to this notebook, you were only one-sixth the threat to Earth that Tak is, though ironically you managed to beat her…"
"Get to the point!"
"Long story short, Tak is too powerful to defeat here and now. If we go back in time to stop me from stopping you, then we can save the world!"
"So I can take over!" Zim finished.
"Uh, no."
"Silence, you meatbag!" Zim spun around to face his robot helper. "Gir! We have NEW PLANS!"
"Yes SIR!" The once teal-eyed Gir now displayed red eyes and a menacing glare. He put his hand to his forehead in a salute as he awaited orders.
"We're going back in time to –" Zim continued, then glanced back at Dib. "How are we going back in time?"
"Oh, yeah." Dib scratched the back of his head. "Well, I guess I originally used Tak's ship as a time manipulator, but that's probably gone by now."
"Irken ships are built to last ZILLIONS of invasions," Zim stated. "Hopefully, it's still intact!"
"But it's way out there." Dib gestured upward with his hand.
"I KNOW WHAT TO DO!" Zim shot a fist into the air. "Using the built-in tracker that most Irken spacecrafts contain, I'll track the ships coordinates and reach it from the UNDERGROUND!"
"And how are we gonna do that?"
Zim handed Dib a spork. "You will DIG the way there!"
End of part eleven