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Chapter 2: Insane in the Membrane House

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"Gaz! Gaz, Tak is back!"

"Shut up, Dib." She was pummeling the second mini-boss with a semi-automatic phaser.

"No, listen! We have to figure out where she's set up base!"

"I'm not here right now," Gaz said, slamming her bedroom door in her brother's face. "Die, you stupid chameleon!"

"What?—"

"Beeep. Gaz is out. Go away."

Dib swung the door back open; Gaz's hands were too busy to have turned the lock. Gaz glared, hands still too busy to punch Dib out of the room.

"Gaz, you remember Tak?—"

"I've been playing this dungeon for two hours. Be quiet or you will die a thousand horrible deaths." Knowing how to sneak into all levels of their father's labs made a lot of impossible things possible.

The victory music sounded. Gaz had forgotten Dib was there until he said, "Can I talk now?"

Gaz looked up at Dib with a wide-eyed glare. "I've warned you about setting foot in my room."

"I'm not—" They both looked down at Dib's boots, one of which had inched just beyond the threshold.

Something downstairs shattered, loudly. The crash was followed by the most annoying voice Gaz knew (outside of school, where it was quite a competition) bellowing, "GIR!"

"Your friend's here," she told Dib, who ran immediately to the stairs. "That better not have been the TV."

"Zim!" her brother yelled. "Did you think you could just walk into my house?"

Gaz knew from far too much experience that she couldn't game properly when her brother and the alien were scuffling. She wandered downstairs, dodging a flying sausage, and pulled a box of Interweb-Os out of her secret stash. It was almost empty.

"Dib, I'm ordering pizza," she told her brother, who was in the TV room staring the alien down. Dib didn't answer. "Hey moron, what do you want on your pizza?"

"Gaz, not right now! I—AHH!" Zim had taken the opportunity to trap him in what appeared to be a giant jelly donut. Red jelly dripped down from his hair. "What the hell is this, Zim?"

Zim cackled, rising higher on his metal legs and grinning wildly down at Dib. "This, as you call it, is part of a plan so mind-boggling that your puny human intellect cannot hope to grasp its awesome, undefeatable awesomeness! Prepare for your doom, Dib-ooze, for it will be—"

"Raspberry?" Dib suggested.

"Pineapple and ham it is," Gaz said, picking up the phone.

"No! Wait! I—I want pepperoni!" Dib gasped, struggling against his doughy restraint. "And no fruit. Eegh."

"Does your friend want pizza?" Gaz asked.

"He's not my friend!"
"I'm not his friend!" the boys yelped simultaneously.

"Whatever. Does the evil alien want pizza? Not that I'm paying."

"EGG MUFFIN PIZZAAAA!" Gir screeched, appearing upside down in front of Gaz's face. She pushed him away and he clattered onto the floor. "Pleeease, Mommy?" he begged, his eyes growing to the size of large, glowing coasters. Gaz twitched and turned the phone on.

"Yeah, whatever." She called and ordered pizza to the Membrane residence, then glanced at the boys: Dib was squirming and getting jelly and powdered sugar all over the carpet, and Zim was snickering and pointing at him. "We'll talk about Tak when the pizza gets here. No sooner." Upstairs, the game waited to be beaten so hard it spat out all its secret levels.

"Tak? What about Tak?" Zim demanded.

"NO. SOONER," Gaz growled. Her stomach growled as well.

"She's back, or didn't you notice?" said Dib, attempting to push at the donut from below. "She's enrolled herself in our high school." He paused. "And when I say 'our,' I mean me and Gaz's. You don't belong there either, Zim."

Gaz tapped her foot impatiently and stared toward the front door.

"Gir!" Zim shouted. The robot had disappeared again. "Gir, come here!"

"Hah!" Dib barked, then slipped through the donut and thudded onto the now-squishy carpet. "Ow." He rubbed his shin. "Hah, Zim! I've foiled another one of your dumb plans!"

"Stupid Dib," Zim said, "I let you go. Tak's return changes things. We will have to work together against a common enemy once again."

"Right."

"YES MASTER!" Gir barked, tumbling to a stop in front of Zim.

"Gir! Tak has returned! Go home and guard the base!" Zim pointed in entirely the wrong direction.

Gir saluted. "Yes sir!" His eyes turned red for a split second, and then he rocketed out the window, which would have shattered if they'd gotten around to replacing the last broken pane.

Gaz gritted her teeth. "Hey moron, you were supposed to call and get that fixed."

"I did! They were supposed to come last weekend!"

The doorbell rang.

Gir swerved down the hallway, shouting, "PIZZA!"

Gaz hmphed. "Finally."