Pleasant Kwanzaa
The Voot Cruiser flashed across the Antarctic skies like a bowling ball wouldn't flash across a frozen pond. That is to say, it was very fast and didn't fall into freezing-cold waters. ...Which was good for Zim. He proved this fact by laughing loudly and impressively, although the effect was dampered since he was still wearing the bear suit.
"WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!!" he laughed anyways, throwing his head back so the sound emanated from deeper inside his puny chest. It was one of the "Making Impending Doom Look Good" tips he'd been taught during his training period on the planet Devastis. "MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!! OOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOO!!! NYEH HEH HEH HEH HEH!!!!"
Zim inhaled a large amount of air, then stopped laughing and let out a triumphant sigh. "And I always thought it was hard for a single Irken to be so amazing." Turning back to the computer console, he scanned his options and pressed a button. The ship ground to a halt, its thrusters backpedaling in midair as it positioned itself into a tame hover a mile above the ground. Zim keyed in another code and the plasticine windshield bubble immediately heated up, steaming off the ice that had formed on it during the journey. Hopping up on top of the pilot's seat, Zim pressed his green Irken face against the pliant material and looked out at the scene below him.
Far below on the frozen tundra of Antarctica were penguins of every size and shape, just as he had seen them back in his base all those hours ago, albeit this time colored pink by the Cruiser's tinted bubble. Zim's wormlike tongue involuntarily poked itself out of the corner of his mouth, and he began to salivate at the sight of all those unwitting earth-beasts. The penguins might not have known it, but they were a sign of the Irken flag gracing the top of this insignificant little globe. Just thinking about it made Zim feel feverish, but he was far too impatient to sit back for even a moment.
"VICTORY IS ZIIIIM'S!!!!!" Zim shouted, even though it was a bit early for all that, and pressed a button on the console. Immediately another tray slid out from beneath the dashboard, a holo-keyboard lighting up on it as he brushed the appropriate sensor pad. His hands moved like lightning across the control panel, adjusting every last variable, then he glanced out the windshield again.
The Voot Carrier had begun to move, gliding soundlessly out from behind the Cruiser and spinning gracefully through the snowstorm. It descended without attracting any attention whatsoever from the penguins, floating down to the head level of one and then, in a sudden motion, snapping it up inside the plastic bubble and shooting back into the air.
"WAHAHAHA!!! I'm so incrediblllle!" Zim cheered, punching the air with a moldy, fur-covered fist as the Voot Carrier with the trapped penguin floated up to the Cruiser's level. The fowl was surprised and rather alarmed, something most people would find totally unreasonable considering that it was standing on a metallic disc, surrounded by a plasticine bubble and looking straight at a creature that was obviously not from the same planet as it. Zim laughed long and loud, narrowing his crimson eyes at the even more frightened penguin as a wide, devilish grin split across his alien face. "YEEEESSSS, cower in FEAR of the awesomness of ZIM!!" he commended it, punching a few more commands on the Carrier remote-keyboard. The disc swooped down again, scooping up another pair of penguins in mid-dive. Zim cackled once more as the Carrier disc enlarged itself, expanding with every new penguin it captured.
"PUNY EARTH MUDBALL!!!" Zim cried, not even seeming to notice that, even if his Cruiser's hull wasn't soundproofed, there was nobody around to hear him. "YOU HAVE BEEN FULL OF LUCK SO FAR, BUT YOUR NEW PERIOD OF...eh...UNLUCKFULNESS BEGINS NOW!!!!!!" He let fly another gratuitous round of diabolical laughter. "IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME, FILTH-WORLD!! BUT YOU HAVE BEEN CONQUERED BY THE GREATEST INVADER OF THEM ALL—FOR I AM ZIIIIIII—"
Suddenly, unexpectedly, the Voot Cruiser lurched as something hit it very hard and very fast. Zim emitted a surprised shout and flailed his arms to keep balanced, crashing into the computer console and hanging on for dear life. The Cruiser was spinning out of control, doing barrel-rolls in midair as it rebounded away from whatever had hit it. For a moment it seemed like the rocket thrusters were going to cut out, but at the last moment they restabilized and Zim's craft righted itself. His head spinning, Zim staggered to the windshield to see who had struck him. It looked like—like an Irken Spittle Runner, a fuchsia, crescent-shaped vehicle developed for the Armada. But this one was longer, a deep maroon than started out as an oval and tapered to three clawlike sections in the back. There was only one ship Zim knew of that looked like that, but...
He was cut short as the video screen crackled animatedly, and the screen dissolved from static into an image of a boy with a rather large head, a pair of glasses shielding amber eyes and a black spike of hair shaped like a scythe jutting out of the top of his head. The huge padded black coat he was wearing gave the boy the illusion of being at least fifty pounds heavier than he actually was, but even that didn't quite keep the sinister expression from his face.
"Hello, Zim," Dib jeered, smirking at the screen. "I'm piloting Tak's ship, which I reformatted after that disaster last time when it thought it was me. I completely purged all personality files from the hard drive, and now it's just a regular old ship that listens to what I say." He paused, then scratched his head. "Why'm I telling you this?" Dib shrugged. "Oh well. Anyways, I'm here to foil your latest scheme and save the Earth once and for all and send you to a laboratory so they can cut you open to study your organs and is that a BEAR suit you're wearing?"
"YES!" Zim snapped irritably, pointing a moth-eaten paw at the onscreen Dib. "FIL-thy HU-man! WHY DO YOU HAVE TO STICK YOUR FREAKISHLY LARGE HEAD INTO EVERYTHING I DO?!"
"My head's not big!" Dib protested automatically. "But if you want to know why I always try and stop you, it's because—"
"TELL ME, STINK-WORM!" Zim commanded. Dib paused for a second, then resumed.
"I always try to stop you because—"
"JUST TELL ME ALREADY!"
Dib gritted his teeth. "BeCAUSE—"
Zim banged his fists on the computer banks. "WHY does it TAKE you so LONG to SAY something, FILTH?!?" he railed, spraying the screen with spit. The onscreen Dib automatically threw up an arm to protect his glasses before remembering that saliva can't be transmitted over an otherworldly communications bandwidth.
"IT'S BECAUSE I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN PROTECT THE EARTH, 'CUS EVERYONE ELSE IS TOO STUPID!" he screamed before Zim could interrupt him again. Zim blinked.
"You know, you could've just said so," the alien commented. Zim quickly regained his composure, whereas Dib then began tearing at his hair. "BUT YOU'LL NEVER STOP ME, EARTH LARVA!!" he insisted, keying in something on the Voot Carrier's control panel. Off in the distance, the disclike craft glided silently upwards and out of sight behind a cloud bank. He couldn't risk the penguins getting freed, even if the human was too incompetent to actually manage it.
"OH, I don't THINK so, Zim," Dib replied irritably, panting from the overexertion of dealing with extraterrestrial idiots. "You'll never get away with it! I'll stop you like I always do, and—MAN, it's SO hard to talk to you when you're in that suit."
"Yesss," Zim answered cryptically, crossing his arms, "yes it is."
As always, Dib was too wrapped up in the traditional hero-villain dialogue to actually do anything. "Your ship must be a lot SLOWER than I remember, Zim," he taunted over the communications link. "I've been waiting for you for a couple hours now!"
This was the straw that broke the camel's back, or, as Irkens say, it was the explosion that shortened the Tallest. "GYAAAAGH!!!" Zim fumed, literally diving for the steering wheel and shoving it as far forwards as the mechanism would allow. The Cruiser immediately shot directly towards Tak's old ship. Dib was caught by surprise, and even after he'd snapped out his delayed reaction the modified Spittle Runner couldn't pull away fast enough. With an unearthly noise, the Cruiser punched through the side of the other craft, crumpling a good quarter of Dib's ship. The Voot continued on the same course for a few seconds more, then swerved back around to face the destruction it had wreaked.
"Don't get in my way, Dib," Zim snarled at the screen. Only Dib's scythelike hair was visible, as he had ducked out of the field of view to avoid injury. "I'm a much more accomplished pilot than you. I was TRAINED to use this ship!"
Trembling, the onscreen Dib struggled to get back into the pilot's seat, purposefully avoiding looking at the video screen. Zim's clawlike fingers tightened on the steering wheel, but he hung back momentarily to see what the human would do. Dib was his sworn enemy, but Zim didn't want to kill him. Yet. It would do the worm-stink good to be taken prisoner and forced to watch the downfall of his entire race. The thought of delaying the torture made the Irken grind his teeth, but he was pacified by the thought that the devastation to his enemy would be that much worse. However, Zim's lack of pursuit didn't go unnoticed by Dib.
"Then maybe your planet's training facilities need more WORK!" the human shot back, smirking cockily as he apparently regained his confidence. On the screen he grabbed the steering wheel, and through the windshield Zim could see Dib's ship soaring up to a vantage point just above the Cruiser. What could he possibly be DOING? "I learned to repair and fly this ship all by myself, with NOTHING to go on—except for maybe a couple episodes of Star Trek—and even I know not to waste a chance to destroy my enemy!"
Zim didn't have a chance to answer, as at that moment Dib disconnected his ship's engine and the modified Spittle Runner dropped like a stone on top of the Voot Cruiser. Its diminutive pilot frantically tried to maneuver his craft out from under it, but in Cruise Mode it was almost the same speed as a New York taxi. While this is one of the fastest speeds that can be achieved without the use of rocket thrusters, it is nearly insignificant when compared to the force of gravity, and the opposing craft smashed right into the Voot Cruiser.
"GAAAAAAAAAHH!" Zim shouted in panic, flattening himself against the floor a nanosecond before the windshield bubble crumpled like aluminum foil. It was a phenomenal stroke of luck that he had kept the bear suit on, as the thick fabric cushioned him enough to prevent more serious damage to his being. Even so, his Pak was the only thing that kept the weight of Dib's ship from crushing his delicate skeletal structure, and it was devoted so single-mindedly to that purpose that it was also extremely lucky that the Cruiser's G-Force compensators remained intact to stabilize his organs as the two ships plummeted from the sky. Over the com-link, Zim could faintly hear Dib laughing maniacally, but this consideration was severely overwhelmed by self-preservational instincts. Gasping for breath, Zim inched painfully beneath the crumpled hull to the control panel, then with a tremendous effort willed his Pak's spider legs to deploy. One did, struggling to find adequate moving space, and began tapping something out at a desperately high speed. After a few agonizing seconds there was a click, then a preprogrammed voice announced "Unlock of Combat Mode Approved".
With a deafening whoosh the output of the Cruiser's rockets doubled, propelling the mangled husk out from under the modified Spittle Runner. Once the craft was free, the windshield bubble immediately retracted into the ship's hull before reemerging, totally repaired. The rest of the ship wasn't in such good condition, but Zim couldn't do anything about that with such short time on his hands; Dib, noticing that Zim had escaped, had restarted his own engines and pulled his ship swoopingly out of its dive to face the Cruiser once more. His voice burst through the com-link again, although the damaged receiver made it sound tinny and broken.
"Quick—FZZZZT—thinking, Zim. But don't think you'll—FZZZZZZ—get away that easily again!"
Zim gripped the controls, his Pak repairing the worst of him and the automatic program repairing the worst of his ship. "It's not over YET, disgustingly pink-skinned human!" he spat—figuratively and literally—as he pulled off the bear suit's hood. His antennae sprang up, and a rush of energy sped through Zim. As long as his antennae were unconfined, he could think as quickly as he needed...since he WAS Zim, though, this was only at about the same rate as the average President. (Lawsuits may be filed on the third floor, folks, and keep the line moving. It's muffin day in the cafeteria.)
In the fractured image on the video screen, Dib appeared confused. "What did you—FZZZZK—say about Yetis?" he asked, then shook his head, causing the damaged screen to pixelize more. "Never—FFFFFFT—mind. It won't matter after I bring you to a SCIENCE LAB for—FZZZZZZCRACKLE—DISSECTION!"
Hissing reflexively at the thought, Zim directed the Voot Cruiser towards the other ship, powering up the thrusters. "IT'S USELESS, DIB," he proclaimed loudly, trying to bluff the human into giving up. Dib was a slightly better pilot than Zim had expected, and he didn't want to risk unduly damaging the Cruiser before he could carry out the rest of his mission. "MY CRUISER CAN CRUSH YOUR PUNY SHIP LIKE A VOGON SMASHES THE GUTS OF A JEWELED CRAB INTO WORTHLESS PASTE!!!"
The onscreen Dib scratched his head. "Well, that—FZZZZSK—ALMOST made—FZZZZAAK—sense. I—" he began, but was cut off as the Cruiser suddenly shot like an arrow toward his ship.
The collision was gargantuan, the Voot Cruiser ramming the modified Spittle head-on. Both ships spun away, severely dented and out of control. It took Zim only a few moments to right his craft, but Dib, having been a pilot for only a few hours, continued to spin off into the distance. A toothy grin stretching across his face, Zim accelerated again and slammed into the other ship once more, then again, then again.
"GAAAAAAAAAAA—FZZZZZT—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!" Dib screamed, throwing up his thickly-cushioned arms to protect his head. Actual sparks were flying off the ship now, its armor chinked and some of its internal wiring poking out into the open air. The ship was a crumpled heap now, rockets damaged and most of the hull bashed in. The Voot Cruiser had fared better, as Zim's deft maneuvering had allowed it to score the most possible damage without taking any itself. While the opposing ship spiraled downwards towards the icy ground, Zim remained motionless in midair to watch in triumph. The human was powerless now—just as Zim had wanted. He could collect the Dib whenever he was ready to show the stupid boy the destruction of the human race. Dib wouldn't go anywhere; that ship wouldn't fly again anytime soon.
But that's where Zim was wrong. Just as his ship was less than a half mile above the Earth's surface, Dib's mind screamed out instructions that his arms followed without question, and he began punching buttons on the control console. There was a heart-stopping pause, and the damaged thrusters reignited, slowing the fall until the ship was quivering in midair just above terra firma. More sparks were produced as the hull automatically resealed itself, and after another second or two the modified Spittle Runner flew back up to the Voot Cruiser's level. One panting agonizingly, the other fuming with incontestable rage, both combatants revved up their engines and prepared to resume the epic battle.