Zim wasn't impressed, being of a pretty long-lived race himself.
"Who are you, old man?" stated Zim bluntly. The smell was even worse with this aged human, but Zim managed to stifle his gag reflex.
"I'm Hubert Farnsworth, but they call me the Professor," replied Farnsworth proudly as he shuffled to a stop in front of Zim.
"And why do they call you that?" queried Zim, staring intently at the wrinkled old individual.
The Professor looked confused.
"I don't know," he said, and shrugged his shoulders.
"'Cause he is a professor," said Fry. "He invents all sorts of things."
"In-te-rest-ing," replied Zim, rubbing his chin before placing his hands defiantly on his hips.
"Here is how you may serve Zim, old one," he said, no hint of joviality in his tone. "You will establish communications with the Irken armada so that I may make my report and get back to my mission!"
"Irken?" replied the Professor, looking even more confused as a scowl crossed his pruney face and his voice became defiant. "Never heard of them!"
"You dare!" snarled Zim, shaking his open hands towards the ceiling. "Surely you filth have heard of the Irken armada! They must have come here centuries ago!"
"Nope," said the Professor.
"Nuh-uh," said Fry.
"Not that I know of," added Leela.
"Sorry, mon," replied Hermes.
"No such jerks here, Dimmy!" offered Bender, giggling.
Zim swiped up a small sphere from the Professor's work bench and hurled it off of Bender's head, hitting him in his dent.
"Ow!" stammered Bender. "You little jerk! I'll ..."
"You will do nothing, metal man!" shot back Zim, shaking his fist. "I am Zim! And I have had enough of your insolence!"
He hissed at Bender, Zim's long tongue shooting forward like a snake's. But he would not sully himself with this futuristic and inferior mechanical creation.
"Gir!" snapped Zim, pointing to the floor beside him. "Attend me!"
"Yes, sir!" saluted Gir as he snapped into place and shifted into crimson-clad duty mode once more. Just then the main door opened behind everyone, and two crimson claws appeared, followed by the rest of Dr. Zoidberg.
"What's with all the yelling, now?" asked the anthropomorphic lobster physician of Planet Express.
Gir stopped in place, just staring at the newcomer; then he licked his metallic lips and produced a stick of butter from out of his hollow little head.
"Gaaahhh!" screamed Zoidberg, the feelers about his mouth vibrating furiously before he raced back the way he came, the door slamming down behind him.
"Awwww," mouthed Gir, his color returning to normal as he stared at the floor and put the butter stick back in his skull.
"We're not finished yet, greenie!" shouted Bender, breaking off the end of a nearby beer bottle and brandishing it menacingly at Zim.
Zim drew back apprehensively, realizing the vulnerability of his skin to sharp objects; then he growled and suddenly he was positioned higher than anyone else in the room as eight mechanical spider legs extended from his PAK and bore him aloft, the Irken invader dancing left and right on pointed tips before lashing out with one of them to knock the bottle away from Bender. It flew to the floor and shattered into amber-colored shards.
"Wow!" marveled Fry, utilizing his lower intelligence. "Does whatever a spider can!"
A light suddenly went off in the dim recesses of his mind and Fry started humming the old "Spider-Man" cartoon theme to himself.
Unfazed by the loss of his weapon, Bender began rolling up a metallic sleeve.
"Yeah, well, spiders get squashed, too!" he roared, and drew back his fist to smash it into Zim. The next thing Bender knew he was tumbling head over heels to land on his antennae, Zim having reached down deftly with another spidery limb to swipe Bender behind his leg and trip him up.
"All right, that's enough!" shouted Leela as she jumped forward and touched down right in front of Zim. The Irken stared at her directly, his one eye larger than the other, before he decided he didn't take orders from one-eyed females and backhanded her sharply across the cheek with his own hand.
"Sweet manatee of Galilee!" exclaimed Hermes as Zim smiled wickedly at his handiwork. "You shouldn't a done that, mon!"
Before Zim could react, Leela had leapt into the air and was executing a 360 degree spin.
"Hee-yut!"
She cried out and planted her boot into the side of Zim's head to complete her signature spinning roundhouse kick, sending Zim tumbling hard across the bay floor.
"Ooof! Owww! Oooo!" complained Zim as he bounced off the floor once, twice, three times, his spider legs ultimately retracting into his PAK once he came to rest.
"All right, knock it off!" yelled the Professor. "Someone is really going to get hurt around here, and it's probably going to be me!"
He softened his voice and looked directly at Zim though his polarized goggles.
"I'm sorry, Zim, but there's no record of an Irken armada ever having arrived on Earth," he revealed.
"Impossible!" barked Zim as he dusted himself off and regained his feet. "The Tallest had sent me here - there - here to scout ahead! There can be no way that they would not have come to Earth and conquered," he stressed, hands shaking.
"You said you were on Earth in the early 21st century, correct?" mused the Professor, one hand resting on his chin and his other hand tucked under his other arm. "Maybe ..."
"Maybe what, old one?" shrieked Zim, making more motions with his hands. "Tell meee!"
"Well, maybe your people did come to Earth shortly after that, Zim," replied the Professor, "but a lot of records from that era were lost when the Reverend Al Sharpton mutated into a giant blob that ate part of North America."
Zim didn't know who this Al Sharpton was, but it impressed him that a pitiful human, even a mutated one, could devour so much of a planetary body by himself.
"What about broadcasting a communications signal into space, to contact the armada?" said Zim. He hoped that his race had indeed survived, and that he could entrust aid from the descendants of the mighty Tallest.
"Even if you used a familiar frequency, it could take forever for your people to receive it and respond, in which case even I'd be long gone," stated the Professor. "Why, it took a thousand years for a television signal from Fry's time to reach Planet Omicron Persei VIII, and then they got all angried up and came here to destroy the Earth and long story short, they obviously didn't."
"A thousand years," said Zim to no one in particular. He couldn't wait another thousand years!
"Not to worry, my little green friend," said the Professor as he shuffled over to Zim and placed a leathery hand on his armored shoulder, still causing Zim to flinch slightly. "I'll figure some way to help you out of your dilemma. In the meantime, with your knowledge of and experience with space travel, you could prove an asset to our Planet Express team!"
The others in the room just gaped at the Professor and then started to protest, especially since Zim seemed to be a genuine extraterrestrial conqueror, but Farnsworth shushed them all down, believing he had secured yet another source of cheap labor. He smiled sweetly at Zim, who stared silently with an upturned lower lip at his ancient benefactor, the Irken weighing his options. He quickly made up his mind, feeling he could use these future people to further his own ends.
"You smell, old one," he said bluntly, "but I accept your terms. Planet Express is now home to Ziiiimmm!"
TBC
