Little bit longer chapter, so bear with me. - S.
Zim sat back in his seat on the good ship Planet Express ship and scowled. He hated being a passenger! He was used to flying his own ship, but on this vessel, Leela was the captain, and the captain got to do the flying.
I will bide my time, thought Zim, oh yes, I will bide it until the ship and all its crew belong to me. He began to smile, just a small grin at first, but then his mouth opened wider. His small body began to tremble, imperceptible at first, then more and more, until finally he was shaking all over and cackling hysterically, his violet eyes closed and his handful of peg teeth and long thin wiry tongue fully extended.
"Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
He then looked up and noticed that everyone was staring at him, and he froze in place.
"Just ... clearing my throat," he said.
"Well, keep it down," said Leela. "For a little guy you sure are loud!"
Zim shot her a dirty look but said nothing, and he leaned back in his seat, bored out of his Irken mind. So far this Planet Express gig had been nothing to write home to Irk about for someone used to conquering planets - or at least, making the effort to conquer them. He had "destroyed" Mars by knocking it out of its orbit and had made it his goal to do likewise to Earth, but that would never happen so long as he was stuck here in this place with these people. Perhaps he could ...
"All right, we're coming up on our last stop today," said Leela, snapping Zim back to the present. "Let's get ready to drop our stuff off and go home."
Zim sat up in his chair, straining to get a better look through the main view-screen, and he saw they were coming up on - a house. A typical yellow Earth-like house set atop a small asteroid, along with other houses situated on other asteroids; and in front of the first house on the left was a large, green, gelatinous blob. The blob was moving, and it had a face, and a hat, and as far as Zim could tell, with enhanced magnification, it didn't look happy.
"Aw, not this guy again!" moaned Bender, looking out a porthole. "Bad enough I had to share my beer with him at the hospital!"
"Hey, you offered it to him," said Fry, leaning back in his own chair. The individual in question had sampled some of the crew's homemade brew a while back, after his guilt got the best of him over an incident with Hermes and the Professor that had involved all their respective offspring.
"Yeah, but that didn't mean I liked sharing it," said Bender, chomping away on a cigar.
"Who is - this guy?" queried Zim, rubbing his chin and peering fixedly at the monitor.
"Mr. Blob," answered Leela, still working the ship's controls, with disdain in her voice. "He's not the nicest guy in the world. He beat the crap out of the Professor and Hermes once, just because he was in a bad mood. He apologized and all, but personally, I still don't like him."
"Perhaps he does not like you, either," muttered Zim under his breath, or so he thought. Fry overheard Zim and started to snicker, but stopped when Leela glared at him over her shoulder.
"Let's just drop our package off and get the hell out of here," she said. "Zim, you and Gir can go down there and get Blob to sign for this."
She spun and tossed Zim a small padded envelope with more than a little force, striking him square in the gut. Apparently she didn't like Zim, as well.
"Ow!" cried Zim, clutching his abdomen. "My squeedily spootch!"
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha!" laughed Bender, pointing at Zim, who by now had fallen out of his chair in pain. Gir probably should have been helping his master out, but he was having too much fun with wealthy Planet Express intern Amy Wong to notice. For whatever reason, Gir was wearing his felt-stitched, Frankenstein-like green dog suit while Amy fussed over him.
"You're just the cutest thing!" cooed Amy. "Can you show me any tricks?"
"Only if you dance with meee," replied the disguised bot in a singsong fashion, and then they both took up the back half of the bridge with their impromptu boogie routine, moving and motioning, and Gir even moonwalking.
"Doo-dee-doo-dee-doo-dee-doo!" he chimed happily.
Zim managed to get to his knees, albeit painfully, and although his organs ached, his mouth was as capable as ever.
"Why ... cough ... why me and ... cough ... Gir?" he protested. "Why not ... send ... cough ... the Fry monkey?"
"Hey, I handled the last delivery!" argued Fry, sitting up in his seat. Fry, being naturally lazy, was exhausted after dropping off an entire business-size envelope at the previous stop, and he knew he needed to rest.
"You heard him, Zim," stated Leela. She knew Fry was next-to-useless, but even more than that, she really didn't want Zim on her ship. Maybe she could leave the newcomer and his bot behind, she thought briefly; but no, the Professor would probably give her a load of guff when they got back, especially if his bowels had been acting up. She sighed and began to slow the ship, readying it for a stop.
"Get ready, Zim, we're just about there," said Leela, tapping the brakes and decelerating the house-sized vessel.
"Fine, Cyclops female," grumbled Zim, already adorned in his dark purple Irken armor built for deep-space survival. He stabbed a button on his wrist with a pointed finger and instantly a transparent bubble briefly enclosed his green head before shimmering out of view, sealing his life support against the impending vacuum.
"Gir!" snapped Zim, not even looking over his shoulder. "It's time to go, Gir!"
Gir just kept dancing with Amy, both of them now starting the Electric Slide.
"GIR!" shouted Zim, spinning around towards the stern. "Move it or lose it!"
Gir immediately stopped what he was doing and stood up straight.
"Okey-dokey!" he replied, before stepping out of his doggie disguise and kicking it off to the side. He then quickly ambled over to Zim's side as the ship came to a smooth halt. The front landing gear with its embedded staircase lowered to the edge of the nearest asteroid, and then the Irken duo passed through the airlock and bounced down the stairs and into space, Zim carrying the package under one arm.
"Well, it's about time you got here!" scowled Mr. Blob, standing on his porch with his pseudopodia crossed in front of him as Zim and Gir made their way up his walk. He didn't appear pleased, but it was hard to tell since he was composed entirely of translucent green protoplasm, and wearing a fedora hat.
"I've been waiting all day!" he continued. "What the hell takes you losers so long?"
"Silence your sniveling, jelly man!" barked Zim, who wished he was back on the filthy Planet Express ship rather than making another useless outdoor delivery during this, his trying first week of work. "We are here now!"
"Well, let me have it already!" growled Blob.
Zim wished he could let Blob really have it with his armor's on-board arsenal, but that would probably be frowned upon by the company, and he believed he still needed their help to get back home. He flipped the package towards Blob, and zero gravity did the rest as the envelope floated into his gelatinous hands.
"Now you must sign for ..." started Zim, detaching a scanner and light pen from his belt, but Blob had already ripped the envelope open. "Hey, you were supposed to sign first!"
"What the hell?" complained Blob, ignoring Zim's words. "It's broken!"
He reached in and pulled out a small white dragon statuette, with wings and scales and tail, and a jagged edge where a neck and head should have been.
"Pity for you," poo-pooed Zim, just wanting to get back on the ship. "Sorry, but we just deliver the stuff! Try some glue, you'll be fine!"
"No, take it back!" shouted Blob, and he launched the statue at Zim, who caught it on the fly and hurled it back.
"No, you take it!" retorted Zim.
Blob made the catch and then the return toss.
"No, I said you take it!" yelled Blob again, but this time the statuette bypassed Zim and clonked off of Gir, who fell over.
Zim went ballistic.
"You dare attack an automaton of the Irken elite!" raged Zim, hands shaking in fury at his customer.
"Yeah, I dare!" said Blob, and he laughed long and hard at the tiny beings in front of him, fueling Zim's rage even more.
"Too bad for you, pip-squeak, but if you don't like it, then you can just kiss my as-"
Mr. Blob never finished his sentence, as a small cylinder situated above Zim's left shoulder suddenly ignited with a bright, thin orange beam of light that sliced Blob all the way down his left side, leaving a pool of burnt-edged gelatin lying there on the porch.
"Ahhhh!" cried Blob, who rushed back inside his home to regenerate his lost "limb". He slammed his front door and shut all the window blinds before turning off his lights, like a homeowner who didn't want trick-or-treaters on Halloween.
"Wah ha ha ha ha!" cackled Zim with delight at having conquered yet another foe, while Gir sat back up, none the worse for wear.
"I'm gonna have me some jello!" squeaked the droid, as he whipped out a spoon and began lapping up the remnants of Mr. Blob. The twosome then made their way back up the ramp and into the Planet Express craft.
"What the heck just happened out there?" asked Leela angrily, having seen the whole thing on a closed-circuit monitor whose sound was broken. "You're not supposed to shoot the customers!"
"He fired the first shot!" replied Zim, deactivating his invisible headgear and shedding his bulky armor. "I acted in the manner of a true Irken soldier and vanquished the enemy! Victory for Zim!"
"Oh, just go sit in the back!" snapped Leela. She didn't know how she was going to explain this one, with Planet Express now opening fire on its customers. Zim eyed her curiously, even angrily, but after one week he knew nothing he could say would make her lighten up; besides, he was still heady with triumph. He tromped to the back of the bridge, Gir beside him, and sat down regally. Fry and Amy sat there staring a bit anxiously at Zim, who been mouthy before, but had never done anything this drastic.
Bender was another story.
"Great job, Zim!" laughed Bender. "I know we haven't really got along, but that was beautiful, buddy! Have a beer!"
He reached into the galvanized silver pail he kept by his station and handed a cold frosty brown glass bottle to Zim.
Zim blinked, wondering what to make of this gift since Bender had already tried to cut him with one earlier in the week. He took it tepidly, still not sure if this was a trick, and shrank a bit from the cold, but then he felt he liked being honored this way. He had already tried Slurm this week, so why not Benderbrau?
"It was nothing," said Zim matter-of-factly.
"Well, you sure put that Blob in his place!" replied Bender, and clinked his bottle against Zim's, which was still unopened and began to froth within.
"No, he didn't!" snapped Leela as she put the ship on auto-pilotand got up from her chair. She then walked steadily towards the stern of the ship, headed straight for Bender and Zim.
"All he did was manufacture bad publicity for us when word of this gets out! Who's going to want to hire a delivery company that might take a shot at them?"
"He started it - and I finished it!" yelled Zim.
"Well, as far as I'm concerned, Zim, that only thing that's finished is you making delivery runs with us!" shouted back Leela.
Zim stared at Leela, then at his bottle, and a malicious smile began to cross his lips as he shook the bottle up and down and then began to point it towards a surprised Leela.
"Don't you dare …"
Too late. Zim deftly twisted off the metallic cap and showered Leela smack dab in the face with golden foam, soaking her hair and tanktop before directing the last of the stream at the floor around her.
"Aggghh!" she cried, trying to wipe the foam from her eye. "Why you little …"
Suddenly she was airborne, her boots having slipped on the sopped deck, and she fell heavily to the floor, nailing her head on a nearby console as she went down and knocking herself cold.
"Oh no! Leela!" cried Fry as he jumped from his chair to cradle the woman he loved but had had problems getting close to. She was unconscious, with a nasty bruise flowering on her forehead, but she was still breathing normally.
"Why'd you do that, Zim?" asked Fry, looking up, his face a mixture of anger and bewilderment
"Silence!" snapped Zim. "My bottle was too full of foamy stuff to contain. More importantly, the captain is now incapacitated, and the ship needs a new captain!"
He paused for a second, then raced towards the captain's chair.
"I choose me!"
The controls weren't difficult to master, and soon Zim had the Planet Express ship hurtling at breakneck speeds towards Earth, the Invader laughing and cackling all the while. This was where he belonged, in command of a starship, not dropping off its packages as a delivery boy!
"More speed!" screamed Zim, even though the ship was already going frighteningly fast. "More speed! Bender robot, push some buttons! Amy human, pull some levers! Ah ha ha ha ha!"
Everyone else was hanging on for dear life, with Fry holding on to Leela. Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea after all, thought the crew, except for Gir, who was beatboxing on the ship's intercom as Zim maintained his mad dash.
Soon the ship was scraping against Earth's atmosphere and blazing through re-entry before homing in on its final destination in New New York …
(Cue the opening shot of every episode of "Futurama", where we get a close-up of the Planet Express ship rocketing along above a 30th century city's transportation tubes. The ship then dips to the right and swerves back up to the left before crashing headfirst into a huge outdoor telecommunications screen and getting stuck there. If you ever wondered just who was flying the ship that badly, well, now we all know!)
TBC
