The Voot Runner continued to build up speed as it rocketed through what was left of 30th Century Earth's atmosphere, and headed out into space. Soon it would achieve the velocity required to crack the space/time continuum and send Zim and Gir back to the 21st Century.
At least, that was the plan.
"More speed, Gir!" yelled Zim as he held onto the controls, even though Gir was sitting right next to him. "We have to be going fast enough so that we can make sure we go back in time!"
Gir blinked, then smiled.
"When we get home, can I watch 'The Angry Monkey Show' again?" he inquired of his master. Gir hadn't seen it for a week since they had come to the future, and no one seemed to have had any copies of it in the year 3000.
Zim's lower lip curled up as he squinted one of his eyes.
"That … horrible monkey!" he spat, and then he softened his tone just a tad.
"Yes, Gir, you can watch it, assuming the base is still there!"
There was no reason it shouldn't be in the same spot they had left it, although with the way things had gone the last week, Zim wasn't sure of anything anymore. He was just hoping to get back to almost the exact point from whence they had departed the 21st Century.
Gir smiled.
"I love that show!" he chimed as he pressed series of buttons that increased power to the ship's engines.
Suddenly a red warning light flashed on the Voot Runner's control board, accompanied by the blare of emergency sirens.
"Alert!" shouted the computer's voice. "Alert! Sensors indicate vehicle in pursuit!"
"Eh?" stammered Zim, incredulously. Who could be following them? And then he realized it had to be those Planet Express fools, a suspicion he confirmed by seeing their ship on one of his video screens.
Zim growled. Would he never be rid of them? Still, he had a head start on those filthy future people, and with the Voot Runner possessing the same type of engine that was producing the exact same output of thrust, he realized theoretically there was no way they could catch him. He grinned toothily, and decided to rub that fact in.
The intercom of the Planet Express Ship crackled briefly, followed by Zim's cackling voice.
"Goodbye, Leela," he chortled as he appeared on their viewscreen and saw her at the ship's controls. "I'd like to say it's been fun, but it hasn't! Even in the 30th Century, you Earth fools have proven no match for the awesome might of Zim! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
"Now look here, you ..." started Leela, but Zim cut her off.
"Silence, Cyclops female!" he roared in defiance. "I'm headed back to the 21st Century where you can't reach me - and maybe I'll just use your own engine technology to alter history in favor of the Irken Empire! Ha ha! I am Ziimmm!"
He cut off his transmission and focused again on his headlong flight, still far ahead of his pursuers, who chased after him in vain. The only way to stop Zim now would be to head him off ...
... and then he wondered where the massive starship looming in front of him had come from.
"Aaaahhhh!" cried Zim.
Despite the fact it was still some ways off, Zim could see that the vessel was enormous, many times the size of the Planet Express ship, which itself dwarfed the tiny Voot. He pressed a button in front of him to examine the craft more closely, and utilizing his telescopic sensors, made out the name of the ship on its port bow.
It said, in all capital black letters, "NIMBUS".
Zim wasn't sure what a Nimbus was, but he didn't have time to ponder, as his communications speaker suddenly chattered with an incoming transmission.
"Attention approaching vessel!" came an authoritative if slightly pompous voice. "This is Captain Zapp Brannigan of the Starship Nimbus, and I order you to identify yourself and state your intentions!"
A four-color holographic image fluttered in front of Zim's console, revealing a blonde-headed human with big teeth, white gloves, and a crimson uniform trimmed with tan. Zim just blinked, mystified, and then thought to himself that this was undoubtedly one of the absolute dumbest-looking humans he had ever seen in his short history of dealing with the dim-witted race that called Earth home.
"I am Zim, an invader of the Irken Elite," he snarled, "and I go where I please, Goldilocks!"
"Me, too!" added Gir, popping out from behind Zim and waving at the images in front of them. Kif Kroker, Zapp's first officer, stepped out from behind his captain and waved back, only to catch an elbow in the gut from his commander.
"Oof!" gasped Kif, ovoid eyes widening.
"Kif, don't wave at these people!" admonished Brannigan. "Now look here, Greenie ..."
"The name is Zim!" shouted Zim, exasperated.
"Well, you called me Goldilocks, so I'm calling you Greenie! I'm a decorated starship captain ..."
"And I'm a highly decorated Invader!" shot back Zim, even though he had never really received any sort of Invader award from the Tallest. "Blah, blah - whatever, human! Just get out of my way!"
"No dice!" stated Zapp, crossing his arms in front of him. "No one gets past Zapp Brannigan!"
"Fine, human!" snapped Zim. "I will simply fly right by that plodding elephant you call a ship! Ha!"
Zap growled at Zim, his face turning a slight shade of red.
"Well, this elephant is going to squash that mosquito you call a vessel!" retorted Zapp, momentarily assuaging the sting to his pride.
"All hands to battle stations!" he yelled. "We're about to teach these two pipsqueaks a little lesson I like to call - Brannigan's Law!"
Along the Nimbus' hull, giant energy cannons began locking into place, all trained on the incoming vessel and its ridiculously large extra engine. Zim saw all this activity unfolding and began to sweat, not quite knowing what to do next. Slowing down wasn't an option - he couldn't risk breaking speed, or he and Gir might lose their chance to get back to the 21st century forever...
Zim floored his accelerator, pushing his control stick as far forward as it would go while diverting power from all other ship systems to propulsion, increasing the Voot Runner's speed as he added the thrust of his own engines to the one provided by Planet Express. Gir actually began to frost over slightly, and Zim exhaled in a cloud-like plume as the life support and climate control units began to power down, much as Zim himself had stolen power from his platoon's battle armors when he had trained on planet Hobo 13.
Leela scowled as she watched Zim pull away primarily with what had once been her ship's engine.
"He's getting away!" shouted Fry, pointing towards the ship's main window at the dwindling Voot Runner, as if no one else could see it.
"Like hell he is!" snapped Leela. "Arming weapons!"
She reached down and deftly flicked a series of switches to her right, and several diodes began to illuminate up and down her control panel.
"What weapons?" stammered Professor Farnsworth from the rear of the bridge. "The only weapon I ever installed on this crate was a newspaper gun!"
It was true. The Professor and Hermes had used that same gun to help their sons deliver papers when the younger duo had fallen behind on their delivery schedule with their now-defunct media enterprise, Awesome Express. There was a gun turret mounted on top of the hull, but that was just there for show.
Leela blinked, remembering, and then frowned once more.
"Damn it!" she finally got out. "Well, somebody load me some tabloids or something!"
She pressed her own throttle as far forward as it would go, pushing the engine past safety limits, and the increased forward motion threw everyone else back in their seats as Planet Express made one last attempt at stopping Invader Zim. The Voot Runner itself continued its headlong flight, blue flame thundering behind it from its borrowed engine, thrust augmented by the Voot's tiny blue jets. Just as it attained lightspeed velocity, bringing the trans-time rift into view, the Voot was almost on top of the Nimbus, which was still powering up its arsenal, but too late.
"Holy crap, they're gonna hit us!" yelled Brannigan, as he threw his arms up in front of his face and cowered behind Kif. The D.O.O.P. (Democratic Order of Planets), whom Zapp served and had nearly destroyed once, would not be pleased if someone put a hole in his ship that they would have to pay to have closed.
"Fire!" shouted Leela from the also-approaching Planet Express ship, just as her gun turret was finally locked and loaded with multiple back issues of the Awesome Express Times. She lined up Zim's ship in her targeting scope and depressed her firing trigger.
Zim chuckled frostily as he surged right for the Nimbus bridge, collision imminent, then used his superior self-professed piloting skills to pull back on the controls at the last possible milli-second and send his ship vaulting perfectly up and over the much larger vessel.
Almost.
The very tip of the Voot's stolen engine just barely nicked the uppermost portion of the Nimbus, but that microscopic collision was more than enough at the speed they were traveling to send Zim and Gir tumbling head over heels - and screaming wildly.
"Ahhhhh!" they cried in unison, unable to halt their rollercoaster ride right into the swirling rift, which automatically snapped shut right behind the Voot just after it had entered it.
The Nimbus was relatively undamaged, but then took several direct hits from a score of rolled-up newspapers that had been aimed at the now-disappeared Voot.
"Hey, watch where you're shooting!" snapped Brannigan. "Kif just cleaned those windows!"
Zapp leaned forward and noticed a small smudge of newsprint in the corner of the main observation window. He frowned.
"Kif, you're gonna have to suit up and clean the outside of the ship all over again!"
Kif was about to protest meekly, when they both saw the Planet Express ship coming right at them.
"Didn't we just go through this?" moaned Zapp, before retreating behind his crossed arms again.
"Pull up! Pull up!" cried Fry on the other craft as the Nimbus loomed into gigantic view.
"We're doomed!" cried Bender, shaking up and down and dropping the last vestiges of his cigar as he unbuckled himself. "Doooomed!"
Hermes and Amy and Zoidberg and everyone else were also shrieking in panic as a collision appeared unavoidable
Leela groaned as she pulled back on the controls as hard as she could, muscles knotting and tensing in her arms, sweat dripping down her brow as it appeared her ship was about to fatally slam into the other. One last pull, though, with both an unbuckled Fry and Bender now helping, and the Planet Express ship pulled clear of the Nimbus with just a few feet to spare - but the damage had already been done.
"Curse you, Zim!" cried the Professor as long-range scans showed no trace of the Voot Runner. "Curse yoooouuuu"
Hopefully history would show that Zim hadn't succeeded; but then, the crew had seen before in their travels that the future and the past were both infinitely malleable, so no one was going to lose any sleep if Zim got their stolen engine back home in one piece …
Leela braked her ship into a much slower, more level trajectory aft of the Nimbus just as the communications channel chittered.
"Well, well, if it isn't sexy Captain Leela," said Zapp Brannigan smarmily, his toothy smile filling the viewscreen.
Leela dropped her head into her hand, just as Bender began laughing ...
The Voot Runner tumbled through a subspace conduit, on its way back to the 21st Century, and Zim fervently hoped that the slipstream they were traveling didn't end at a room with a moose. Zim and Gir held on to each other, screaming, just as they did at the beginning of their journey the previous week, when suddenly their ship lunged violently to the right to follow the contours of the slipstream tunnel. The Voot maintained its structural integrity, but its borrowed engine was shorn clear of its moorings by the sudden shift in velocity, ultimately shattering against the walls of the conduit.
"Ohhhh nooooo!" cried Zim.
The shock forced the time tunnel to collapse, forcibly ejecting the Irken vessel and its passengers, who then appeared above the planet Earth.
Zim couldn't immediately discern what time period they had emerged into, but he had more pressing problems on his Irken hands as warning lights and klaxons began flashing and ringing all throughout the Voot's cockpit, joined by Gir's own cries, as the ship began to plummet towards the blue globe below.
"The madness!" screamed Zim as he felt his brain warping from all the unyielding noise. "The madness!"
The ship continued its downward spiral like a wounded duck, twisting and turning and sparking from where its connections to the Planet Express engine had been severed.
Two astronauts from an American space shuttle docked at the International Space Station thought they saw something rocketing towards the planet, but then they shrugged their shoulders and went back to work. Not far off, a blue-suited being trailing a red cape was hefting a massive stone platform tinged in luminescent green light into space. He caught a glimpse of the alien vessel plummeting down, but was too involved with his own predicament to check it out.
The Voot Runner scorched as it plunged through the atmosphere on re-entry, its occupants still screaming out loud as their ship trailed smoke and flame across the sky. The twosome started frantically pushing buttons and pulling levers, trying to bleed off as much speed as possible before the inevitable impact. Zim slammed his fist down upon a giant smiley-face button on his control console, automatically firing the reaction control thrusters mounted in the craft's nose. For a few seconds the Voot began to slow, smoke dissipating from behind it as its velocity was retarded; but then the thrusters flared and died, and the ship began to fall again.
It kept falling as Zim and Gir howled out loud, as down they went, until finally the ship slammed into the ground upright and skidded forward, plowing a deep furrow behind it as it tore up the soil and cement below and sent debris flying in all directions. The street shook as the Voot continued on its path, now slowing with each passing meter, until finally it came to rest on the front lawn of a tiny green-and-purple structure with a network of power siphons extending from its outer walls into those of the adjoining homes. A small triangular flag reading "Earth" rested above the Voot as its partially melted canopy struggled to open, then popped free.
Dib, who had seen the whole thing from his roof, rushed up to Zim's house, a clear plastic sports bottle of water in his hand. His sister, Gaz, had refused to accompany him, calling him a moron, while his father had told Dib to run along and have fun.
Dib walked over to what was left of the picket fence by the house and peered into the mangled Voot, where he saw a dented Gir lying upside down, and a bruised Zim resting uncomfortably in his control chair. Dib blinked as he looked down at the Irken pair, then blinked again as he looked back at all the destruction Zim and Gir had wrought to the street and the surrounding property with their crash-landing.
He turned his large head to look back at Zim and scowled.
"Good going, Zim," he chided. "Really good!"
Zim stirred wearily from where he lay, feeling all the aches and pains of his latest imperfect landing. He cringed as he heard Dib's voice, then opened his purplish orbs slightly to glimpse Dib standing there along with his base, neither looking any different from when he had left.
"Geez, Zim, this is just like yesterday where you tunneled a hole in the hallway with that handheld drill device you brought to skool!" continued Dib.
Zim scanned his memory for that incident - which he indeed did recall as having happened most recently, as the Dib pig had muttered.
Zim smiled. He had done it, as he had expected. He had gotten them home, give or take a few hours. Another triumph for the Irken Armada! Losing the futuristic engine was a slight setback, but he still had enough resources in the present time to bring about Earth's downfall.
Zim looked up at Dib, blinked through the haze, and began to chuckle. He saw Dib and his massive head, distorted behind the water bottle he held in front of him, almost like a jar ... It was a look that Zim had seen before, in the year 3000, and the remembrance of Dib's heady fate in the future pleased the Irken to no end.
Steeling his battered body, Zim lay there and laughed out loud, as annoyingly as ever, his drill-like tongue extended in front of him and his eyes shut tight as his whole frame shook with amusement. Gir began chuckling, too, like an amused child, even if he didn't know what the joke was.
Dib looked down, one eyebrow raised, wondering why Zim was racked in such a fit of insane mirth, and finally chalked it up to either Irken insanity or the simple stress of a crash landing. Whatever it was, Zim was sure to be back in class tomorrow, causing more problems for humanity, with Dib Earth's only hope. Their dance would begin a new ...
Dib shook his head as Zim continued to laugh, and laugh, and laugh, oblivious to everything and everyone around him save his amusement. And it didn't look like he would stop anytime tonight, as the sun began to set behind them. Dib scowled.
"You jerk," he said sullenly.
THE END
(Cue "Invader Zim" end theme music and purple credits screen)
It's been a blast writing this, and I hope it's been a blast reading it. Thanks to everyone who offered their comments, criticism, and story suggestions the last few months, whether I got to work them into my little tale or not. You know who you are ...
Invader Zim created by Jhonen Vasquez. Futurama created by Matt Groening & David X. Cohen.
