I make no claim as to the ownership of characters from either "Invader Zim" or "Futurama". I just love both shows, despite having only recently discovered Zim, and decided to mix them together. Let me know what you think, thanks!

Space distorted for a fleeting moment as the craft came into view with a blinding light, and then the light faded almost as quickly as it came and all was still and serene.

Except for the yelling.

The purple-and-silver ship that emerged from subspace didn't do so calmly, but instead tumbled over and over as its reaction-control thrusters fired, tiny blue jets straining to level the small vessel out. The screams of its inhabitants could not be heard in the vacuum of space, but would have been deafening to anyone within the cockpit - at least anyone with higher intelligence - until finally, mercifully, the rocket righted itself and began cruising slowly, almost patiently, like a waiting shark sizing up its next meal.

"Gir!" sounded a shrill voice behind the glassed canopy of the Voot Runner. "What just happened? Just what hyperspace coordinates did you use in the navigational computer? Answer me!"

Zim's opaque violet eyes widened, the left one larger than the right and looking as though it would pop free of the socket. His green lower lip curled upwards and quivered in anger, and his thin black arms were crossed above his banded armor as he stared directly at his little robotic companion next to him, the construct lying on its head. The Irken invader knew it would always be an adventure when traveling with his brain-damaged standard information retrieval unit, a gift from the Tallest for his mission to obliterate the Earth, but sometimes it still surprised Zim just how mindless Gir could be.

True to form, the small silver automaton had righted himself and was now absent-mindedly dipping a spicy chicken wing into a small plastic cup of ranch dressing, the android not even acknowledging if he had heard his master. Which he hadn't.

"Who, me?" queried Gir in his singsong mechanically distorted voice, dressing smearing his mouth as he turned to his left, half-moon cyan-colored photoreceptors staring at a fuming Zim. The little droid spoke as though Zim had just asked him an absolutely ridiculous question.

"The coordinates, Gir!" snapped Zim, holding out one hand. "Give me the coordinates that brought us to this - place!"

Gir suddenly squealed with delight, taking Zim totally aback.

"I didn't use coordinates," he continued, the little robot becoming more animated. "I just used a chicken wing! Wee-hooo!"

Sure enough, there it was - a chicken wing dripping with hot sauce and white dressing was jammed into the nav computer's interface, looking dreadfully out of place as Gir flapped his arms up and down in windmill-like fashion, pleased at what he'd accomplished.

"Grrrr," snarled Zim before wearily dropping his head into one hand. The data drive could be fixed, but Gir was tough to take on a good day - and this wasn't shaping up to be one of those days.

The alien twosome had been on Earth for months now and made no real progress towards obliterating the human race, although they had annoyed more than a few people along the way. Zim had chalked it all up to being (almost) alone on a strange new world, and honestly believed that his setbacks were all temporary, that it was only a matter of time before had cleansed the planet of the human filth and laid the planet bare for the Irken armada. At least, that's what Zim hoped he had conveyed to the Tallest in his frequent progress updates, transmitted across the near-incalculable distance of space.

When not making reports to his superiors or devising plans to eradicate humanity, Zim had been working on upgrades to his equipment, particularly the Voot Runner. He had tinkered with its faster-than-light drive earlier this morning, to see if he could make the ship so fast that he could be back at Irk in the proverbial blink of an eye, and theoretically speaking his modifications should have worked. Of course, he had made the mistake of demanding assistance from Gir, and as always, near-disaster had ensued. Not that he'd ever admit it, but Zim wasn't the greatest pilot in the galaxy, and he had concentrated on the ship's controls while ordering Gir to load the hyperspace chicken, er, coordinates. Sometimes Zim wondered why he even kept the android; but once in a while Gir was more-than-capable of following orders, including times where he had stolen cameras or discredited television footage that could have proved that the twosome really were from another planet. Gir also kept Zim company, even if Gir's behavior could go from barely functional to bouncing off the walls in a split second, and if nothing else Zim was glad to have someone from home around as he plotted the downfall of terra filtha - eh, firma.

Zim quickly scanned the space around the Voot Runner through the craft's bubble-like canopy, and it actually seemed like nothing had happened at all. Earth was still there, as big and blue and disgusting as ever, and the Irken emissary shook with rage and revulsion as he looked over the object of his non-affection. He strained his bulbous insect-like eyes into the distance around the planet, looking for something else, and frowned as he failed to find it. He deftly stabbed an index finger at a button on the console before him.

"Computer!" he barked. "Where is my Irken observation platform?"

The platform had been Zim's home away from home on that squalid azure orb far below him, which he had use to observe all inane human traffic in solitude as well as drop the most massive water balloon ever fashioned on that particularly troublesome Earth boy, Dib. Dib, thought Zim angrily ... and then he was pulled out of his furious reverie by the computer's disinterested voice.

"Oh, I don't know," came the weary mechanized reply. "I looked for it, but I can't find it, either."

"What do you mean!" snapped Zim. "How could a piece of advanced Irken technology simply disappear?" he moaned, his voice rising as he finished the last word, his emphasis on the last syllable.

"Don't know that, either," said the computer, bored as ever. "All I know is it's gone. Departed. Forsaken. Can I go now, too?"

"Yes, yes," replied, Zim motioning back and forth with his hand.

"Thank you," intoned the computer, and then all was silent again save for Gir's crunching down yet another chicken wing smothered in sauce and dressing.

The platform - gone? What could have possibly happened, mused Zim? The humans had no way to they could possibly detect it, at least no way that he knew of. He had to notify the Tallest, but the Voot Runner's communications antennae weren't powerful enough to reach the armada, not unless he tapped into his long-range array in the bowels of his small green-and-purple home planetside. Zim pressed another button to link up with his base - and nothing. Just a nervous chitter every time he pressed the button, which became more and more frequent as Zim grew more and more agitated until finally he was pressing the button five times a second before the computer snapped back on.

"Hey, quit it!" shouted the computer. "That hurts!"

"Silence!" bellowed Zim. "Why is the base not responding? Answer me!"

"Uh, 'cause it's not that there, either, chief."

Zim's jaw dropped. The base gone, too! Had those filthy humans found him out? Had Dib been responsible? That ... Dib ...

But no, Zim and Gir hadn't been gone that long, probably just one Earth hour to test the Voot Runner. The humans wouldn't have had near enough time to disable or destroy his home base and his platform - well, maybe the house, but Earth certainly had no capability to destroy the platform, had no space-capable weaponry as far as he had ascertained.

Zim racked his Irken brain for possible explanations, wondering how it had all gone so wrong so fast when suddenly he was jolted out of his contemplation by an emergency klaxon blaring just over his head, filling the cockpit with red light and ear-piercing sound, louder than any screams he or Gir could produce.

"Ahhhh!" yelled Zim. "Stop that infernal noise! What's going on!"

"Intruder alert!" sounded the computer, duty-ready and with no trace of weariness now. "Vessel approaching, zero mark zero, on an intercept course!"

"Let me see!" clamored Zim, waving his arms frenetically. "Let me see! On screen!"

A rectangle of green light materialized, one side at a time, on the inner glass of the cockpit and became a tele-screen, highlighting the newcomer in all its green-shelled glory. The ship was large, perhaps ten times the size of the Voot Runner or even more, and fast, too. It was roughly cylindrical in shape, tapering to a point at the front, with a triangle arrangement of dark green fins set at the rear of the light-green fuselage. There was a yellow circle affixed to either side of the top fin, an emblem of sorts.

"Enhance magnification!" barked Zim, and the logo suddenly came much closer and into sharper focus. It was a name Zim had never seen before, something he had never encountered in all his Irken travels or in all his time on Earth.

Something called Planet Express.

TBC