Well, this time it's only one day late. Maybe I'll do myself one better again next week and release a chapter that's no days late! All that aside, this was the only chapter that I had written myself in the original version (Kind of; I've moved the last scene of the original version's chapter to the beginning of next chapter). This version has been pretty heavily overhauled, including, for example, the presence of Minimoose. MOOSEY!
Disclaimer: I do not own Invader Zim.
The Betrayal
Rewrite Chapter 4
Stop the Unstoppable
"Excuse me, sir?" The Irken guard turned, veins bulging above his goggles and high collar, muscles bulging under his magenta uniform. A little… hairy pink thing in a black jacket stared up at him. "I'm a slave here for a delivery task. Where is SIR unit storage?"
The guard spoke in a condescending but kind tone, as if Dib was a lost puppy or something. "Go on down this hall, take the third right, and it's clearly marked to the left, little slave beastie!" he said with a dumb smile.
"Thank you, much superior being!" Dib said, choking on the bitter-tasting words as he ran off. It only took him another minute or two to find SIR Unit storage, and on the room's door, there was another sign. One that read 'WARNING: EXPOSED WIRING'. Dib smiled, much like he did when he first discovered Tak's ship.
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Kloof walked briskly through the hallways of the Massive. He didn't draw even the slightest modicum of suspicion; that was the best part. Turning down another hallway, he found it obstructed; and his scarred lips sagged into a frown. The obstruction consisted of Zim standing in place with a truly ridiculous amount of self-confidence, flanked by Gir, Minimoose, and Mimi. "Stop right there, you HIDEOUS TRAITOR!" Zim screeched.
"Your words wound me, Zim," Kloof said calmly. "Actually, no. No they don't. Nothing you do can ever wound me again. Stand. Down."
"You DARE to order me around?!"
"Sure. Why NOT? I'm Taller than you, I outrank you, and I can very truly kill you if I need to." Kloof drew his swords, giving Zim a good look at them. They were long, wide slabs of metal attached to simple handles. Diodes and wiring, crackling with electricity, had been welded liberally onto the flat sides of the blades. "Last chance."
Zim growled, head down, pinkish eyes averted, hands balled into tiny fists. Finally, he yelled, "Mimi! Attack!" Kloof brought up his blades, but Mimi's claw was lightning fast, striking under his swords and pounding his stomach. He was slammed backward into the wall. "How do you like THAT, Kloof?!"
"It's a start," Kloof said with a smile. Mimi leapt at Kloof again, this time aiming her claw at his throat, but Kloof blocked the attack with one sword while smashing Mimi to the ground with the flat of the other. Before the vicious little robot could regain its footing, Kloof kicked it away. "Now you have to die!" The armored Irken bull-rushed Zim, swords extended like wings so they nearly scraped the sides of the hallway, hornlike antennae pointed forward.
"Ahh! Minimoose, defend me!" Zim cried. Minimoose squeaked and a small Gatling gun extended from his stomach, firing a burst of rounds at Kloof. They simply ricocheted off his armor, and Kloof stunned Minimoose by leaping up and smashing the tiny robot moose between his shoulder and the ceiling. Kloof took a clumsy slash at Zim as he fell, but Zim dodged out of the way. "GIR! Protect your master!"
Zim expected Gir to shift into Duty Mode, at least long enough to slow Kloof down. Instead, some sort of wide-barreled gun came out of Gir's chest and began firing chocolate hard shell at Kloof, causing him to gasp as the hardening, waxy dessert topping engulfed him.
"Gir! Where did you get that?!" Zim yelled questioningly.
"I got CREDIT CARDS, mastah!" Gir cheerily shouted in response, not letting up on the stream of chocolaty goodness.
Zim ignored the potential dangers of Gir having credit cards at the moment to keep his attention on Kloof. "Minimoose! Freeze rays!" Having recovered, Minimoose shot cyan-colored rays from his antlers, hardening a very angry and chocolate-coated Kloof. Thick as it was, the shell began to crack almost immediately, though…
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"Charge the laser!" Tak screamed. Gaz was revving up her ship's engine, but she was still mostly a sitting duck as her ship went through the ignition sequence.
"Weapons charging." The ship's computer, as a result of multilayered tampering, now spoke in an eerie double-voice that sounded at once like Tak and Dib. That kind of problem could be hammered out later. "Laser fully charged."
"Fire, then!" I shouldn't have left Mimi with that idiot Zim. Next time Kloof wrecks her, she may be beyond repair, and I can't trust ZIM to keep her safe, to be sure. Tak shook her head and refocused on the situation at hand, frowning as Gaz managed to dodge again, with just the secondary rockets. Worse, this time Tak managed to blast an ugly hole in the hull of the Massive instead.
"Is that the best you can do?" Gaz's bored tone only served to further grind Tak's gears. Seething, Tak decided not to bother charging her laser anymore and decided to just start firing it as quickly as it could, efficiency be damned.
Gaz veered upwards, away from the stream of death, and rushed Tak, firing the BLT. The results were delightfully effective: a red plane of light, arcing taller and taller, slammed into Tak, knocking her ship for a loop and leaving it crackling with electricity.
"Warning: Shields down." DAMN! I just got those shields working on the trip over! "You little BITCH!" Tak began charging the laser again, but this time, instead of waiting, she accelerated and slammed into Kloof's larger gunship, causing it to roll uncontrollably and denting the side. Cackling, Tak pulled a quick U-turn and rushed Gaz again.
Unfortunately, Gaz was angry now. "I'm going to tear you into alien shreds, cram them through a wood chipper, and feed them to that little dog who lives next door!" Gaz shouted. Gaz fired off a pair of rockets, which Tak easily swerved to avoid… only to scream as she realized she was rolling right into the path of the BLT.
The shot Gaz fired literally peeled a thin slice off of Tak's ship, leaving an ugly, sparking grey scar along the left flank. "You'll need to do BETTER THAN THAT!" Tak retorted as she slammed into Gaz's windshield, this time so dead-center that she began pushing the gunship backwards instead of glancing off of it. Another pair of missiles Gaz had been firing went wild, careening into a nearby Shuvver and destroying it. Tak and Gaz paused and locked eyes through their respective flattened windshields, creating a moment of eerie calm.
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"I'm sorry, Invader Sneakyonfoota," Red said, "But we can't spare twenty tanks for your operation." The slim Invader on the screen sagged, eyes downcast. "Look, you're one of our taller Invaders, and we appreciate that-"
"Really, we do," Purple added helpfully.
"…But a dozen are going to have to do. It's not that we don't have the money, but that we don't have the tanks. There was a malfunction on Maketanksia…"
"My Tallest, we have a code-Z problem," an Irken officer said. "Zim is onboard."
"I'm afraid the matter isn't negotiable, and we have a pressing issue…" Red concluded, hastily cutting the connection with Sneakyonfoota.
"Zim?!" Purple yelled. "Crap! He's annoying enough in exile!"
"Well, my Tallest, I have him on-camera. It seems another Irken is already… solving the problem."
"Really? Let me see!" Red ordered. A black-and-white camera feed, including sound, was brought up of Kloof slashing wildly, nearly splitting Zim open despite still being covered in chocolate from the waist down. "That's awesome!" the Tallest yelled, laughing. "You! Popcorn! Bring it!"
Purple pointed at the guards. "You guys and about… thirty others go help whoever this guy is out. I want you to capture Zim, but accidentally kill him through excessive force, got it?!" The guards nodded and ran out of the room.
"That was a little harsh," Red chuckled.
"I just want to see Zim hurt. Or die."
"I know. That was a compliment."
---
Screaming, Kloof broke his legs out of the chocolate hard shell and charged Gir. "Hug me!" Gir screamed, but instead, Kloof impaled Gir through the chest, lifted his new Gir-skewer into the air, and used his other blade to chop off the robot's skinny little legs. Gir didn't seem overly fazed by the experience. "Look master, I'm a donut!" he said to Zim.
"Are you alright, Gir?" Zim asked, more out of general panic then genuine concern, frantically searching his PAK's storage compartment for a weapon with some power.
"I can fill mah chest with fine china!" Kloof decided holding Gir in the air on the end of his sword was no longer an efficient use of his time, and simply flung him away.
Mimi, on her feet again, opened up a chest cavity and shot her own missiles at Kloof, a rack of little conical things that looked fairly unpleasant. However, Kloof dodged with surprising ease. He moved with the reflexes and intensity of one born and raised for the battlefield, letting rockets rush along his neck, under his arms, between his antennae. Finally, he zipped behind Tak's robot companion. "Goodnight!" Mimi turned and swung her claw, knocking Kloof away, but it was too late – even as she sent him flying, her head disconnected from its body.
"How did you do that? TELL the Zim!!" the little green Invader yelled, firing a laser pistol he had produced.
Shielding his face with his far less vulnerable arm, Kloof stood and ran towards Zim. The laser beams left only minor singe marks in the rebel's armor, and Zim was forced back by another sweeping slash. "Don't patronize me, Zim. I was top of the class for a reason, yeah?" Another swing of the sword, high and horizontal. Zim dodged by leaning way far back, but fell down on his butt for the trouble, and his gun went skidding away.
"MINIMOOSE! Power tackle!" Zim ordered, and the little moose crashed into Kloof's back with all the fury and power of a cannonball (well, most of the fury). "You haven't won yet, you stinking stink-traitor!" Zim yelled, activating the spider legs in his PAK and launching two forward. Stumbling to his feet, Kloof dodged one and pushed Minimoose into the other, blocking it and causing the little floating robot to squeak in pain. "Uh-oh."
"Yes, uh-oh!" Dropping one sword, Kloof grabbed the extended spider-leg and pulled Zim forward, slicing off the mechanical leg with his blade. When the screaming Zim reached him, Kloof viciously butted foreheads with him, and the smaller, fleshier Irken tumbled to the ground again. When his vision refocused, he noticed Kloof walking towards Zim with both swords again, Zim's blood on his forehead and an unnervingly wide grin on his lips. "Keep it coming, ZIM! I haven't felt this alive since the accident!"
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Gaz growled in frustration. No matter where she fired her weapons, she just couldn't seem to get a direct hit on Tak. Tak shot Gaz with her own, fully charged laser, and stunned the ship. She then took the opportunity to ram Gaz yet again, building up a new charge for the laser. Gaz screamed in anger and fired her last four missiles simultaneously. Boosting as fast as she could without engaging the hyperdrive, Gaz raced her own missiles and passed Tak by. "What's that wretched HYUMAN planning now?!" Tak snarled as she dodged the missiles, which curved off. Curious, Tak gave chase, as Gaz raced towards the rear of the Massive and skimmed along the surface.
Meanwhile, a communication channel cracked to life on Gaz's console; the pilot of a nearby Viral Tank. "Identify yourselves! What's going on between you two?" Gaz pressed a button on the console to close and block communication channels; for her convenience, Kloof had marked it 'SCREW YOU'.
With that taken care of, Gaz pulled a 180 while still flying in the same direction. "Let's see how well you can play," Gaz muttered as she fired the BLT. This time, Tak was able to dodge entirely and blast the offending weapon with a charged laser, sending the Squidge rolling. Gaz's head jolted against the dashboard as the shipboard computer warned her that weapons systems were offline due to the critical hit.
Cackling triumphantly, Tak rose above Gaz's ship (relative to the Massive's hull, that is) and extended her ship's claws. "It was nice playing with you, human, but I have a traitor to stop!" Then she noticed a missile from before was streaking towards her – crap, it had a lock on her! Forgoing the finishing blow, she dodged towards a Viral tank and managed to get the missile to smash into that instead, heavily damaging it. "Now, I was finishing you off…"
"But you have to deal with the other missiles first," Gaz reminded her.
"Huh?" Tak noticed with a growl the three dart-shaped blips on her radar, closing in fast from above her five-o-clock. Still maintaining the growl, she flew back down to the Massive and skimmed along it, but this time she was unable to shake the missiles. She began charging the laser, intending to spin in place and sweep away the stupid projectiles with one blast… but then a larger ship was right on top of her, crushing the Dibship/Spittle Runner down into the hull of the Massive, slowing it down by force, and now the missiles were closing in, and the hull was caving under the pressure, and the flashing lights, and the missiles, and the warning beeps, and the missiles, and the missiles!
"Bye," Gaz snickered, flying off.
"CURSED BACON!" Tak screamed, ejecting. Only… there wasn't an eject pod anymore. She was thrown bodily from the ship, only just barely having time to activate the auto-helmet.
Engaging her oxygen, Tak watched in a mix of fury and shock as the missiles slammed into the Spittle Runner, sending it into a death roll before it exploded in a bright flash. She scrambled into the Massive's airlock, cursing to herself for losing the ship she had just gotten back to that horrible little girl. But as soon as she clambered in, she found herself brushed aside by a flock of Irken troops running by, and Tak just stared at them, confused. "Where the hell are you going?" Tak yelled.
"Some metal person is beating up that Zim guy everybody always blames for everything!" a guard explained breathlessly, not even slowing down. Tak ran after them. At the very least, she would retrieve Mimi, and with luck, she could make sure neither Zim nor Kloof would leave the Massive alive.
Gaz drank more soda as the computer flashed the brightly lit message: "Player 2 Wins."
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Zim rolled nimbly under Kloof's slashing attack and came up with an uppercut, actually hitting Kloof's skin and bone. Kloof stumbled backwards, and Zim propelled himself into the air with his remaining spider legs, coming down hard on Kloof's head. This wasn't nearly as effective, as Kloof didn't even flinch, but took a slash at Zim's legs instead. Zim pulled his legs out of the way by lifting himself back up with his spider legs, but Kloof slashed in a circle, cutting through all of these and leaving Zim to crash face-first to the floor. "Ow," Zim said eloquently.
"Come on, Zim!" Kloof pulled back his leg and kicked Zim hard in the ribs. There was a cracking noise, and Zim was sent flying again. "I'm just starting to have fun!"
Gasping, Zim struggled to his feet, then screamed as Kloof ran for him again. "Minimoose! Fire your ion cannon!"
"Squeek."
"What?!" Zim rolled out of the way of a cleaving attack, and Kloof only managed to slice through a wall instead. "What do you mean I never built an ion cannon?! Well, fire anything you have!"
"Squeak!" A torrent of laser light, ball lightning, flame, rockets, and bullets exploded out from Minimoose's front, roaring towards Kloof. The cyborg Irken ducked, but even the edge of the blast clipped one of his false antennae, entirely destroying it as it passed to smash a huge hole in an inner wall.
"Shit! That thing wasn't in Tak's intel!" Kloof swung his swords, and the electricity that crackled along his blades formed into arcs of energy that flew straight at Minimoose. Still, the little robot dodged all the cutting waves, rolling around in midair like a mad butterfly as a foreboding ball of energy formed between his antlers. "Much as I enjoyed the light show…" Kloof leapt into the air and embedded a sword between Minimoose's eyes, creating a shower of sparks and causing the poor little moosebot to let out a pitiful wail. "Is that all you and your robots have, ZIM?" Then the charge from the laser blast overloaded, firing automatically with enough concussive force to blast Kloof backwards through several walls of the Massive.
"Minimoose?" Zim scurried over to Minimoose, who squeaked weakly in reply. "That was the ion cannon I was talking about!"
"Squeak…"
"Really? That was a particle projector? You sure?"
"Squeak!"
"Fine, no need to get TESTY." Zim pulled the sword out of Minimoose's forehead, then noticed Kloof's other sword lying on the ground nearby and grabbed that, too. "Let's see how strong the traitor is when I have his weapons! He will bow, BOW! And I'll turn him into soup anyway!"
"Neat!" Gir yelled, applauding. "Can I come, mastah?"
"No, Gir. Your legs aren't working. Now… to victory!" Zim raised the swords in triumph… and almost fell over. They were so heavy that Zim had to stabilize himself with his (drastically shortened) spider-legs while swinging them or he'd lose balance. Still, he leapt through the multiple holes in the wall after his foe, dragging the heavy blades behind him. "I'M COMING, SOUP!"
End of Chapter
Next chapter, the thrilling end to the battle between Zim and Kloof! And will Tak use the situation to her own ends?