Necrose woke to find his body a good three inches taller than before, as well he was a shade or two tanner though still counted as pale, but his favorite changes were to his face. He now had black hair with a crimson streak on either side and matching eyes, now wearing a pair of black khaki pants and a dark green shirt with the same evil face design as on Gir's chest only now in a plain red.
Necrose tried to pull on his shirt to get a better look at the symbol but found that no matter what way he looked it still seemed a pattern for a jack-o-lantern's face.
Zim took notice of his intrust in the symbol and decided to elaborate "Its the icon for our organization, which will be known as The Order of Chaos...ominous yes?"
The newly cybernetic human slightly started, having forgotten Zim was there "Yeah, it's nice?"
His new leader nodded approvingly but got to the business at hand "Your new body is some of my best work, it has minor holographic ability but can't do anything about major changes. Each finger has a retractable blade to be used like claws, and lastly you have new modified electric generating cells to paralyze and kill, though you have to actually touch your victim for it to work. Of course all systems are mentally controlled so you will only need practice."
Necrose hummed in slight thought "So is that what this first mission is? A test, for practice?"
Zim smirked happily "A female of my species will be landing in two hours, you will intercept her and then end her, But" his face turned serous as he tapped a claw on his own cybernetic hump for emphasis "make sure to not damage her PAK"
Never removing his new eyes from his master Necrose bowed his head in submission "As you wish"
Deep in the storage levels of Zim's base hundreds of robotic creatures, with four legs, two arm like tri-claws, and low slung heads underneath platform like backs. They were lifting crates and boxes of various materials onto their flat backs and tacking them away.
Skoodge stood in the middle of all the robotic carriers "Computer how long until moving all this stuff is done?"
Making several quick calculations the AI responded "About nine hours from now if everything stays at this rate"
The luckless Irkin took a more worried look "Do you think it will all fit in the station?"
That he didn't need any equations for "With the new design Zim made it will, easily"
Skoodge couldn't bring himself to change his worried expression "Speaking of Zim has he told you what his plan actually is?"
Well the sentient AI debated the best way to answer that "No, but since when is that new?"
A look of complete relief washed over Skoodge "True"
In a relatively undamaged part of town a Chinese fast-food place was being robbed, with the cashier shaking nervously and her hands over her head to submit to the assailant, who was none other than Gir in his holographic human disguise, with his pig friend in his grip being used like a heavy rifle.
Gir forced his face to look as sinister as he could wile in blue mode "Give me alllll your tacos"
The cashier was an overweight, but not outright obese, woman with greasy black hair tied very loosely into a ponytail dressed in casual sweat pants and T-shirt with the only uniform a puke green vest with a name tag that dubbed her 'Bliss' "But-But we don't have tacos here, t-this i-is a Ch-Chinese place"
Gir just glared darker, actually looking like threat for a half-second until he spoke "Do not try to fool me, you put guacamolia on tacos, guacamolia sounds like Mongolia, and the Mongols once conquered China".
The horrible logic of guacamole did little to calm the cashier and it showed as she cried hysterically "We don't have tacos"
A beeping noise proved to be a saving grace from the stupidity occurring as Zim's voice sounded in the pig wielding robot's head "GIR! What do you think your doing? You are supposed to be helping Skoodge pack. Get back to base."
Gir's eyes shifted to green as he saluted "As you command sire" only to turn blue again prompting him to point dramatically to Bliss "You got lucky this time, but I will have my prize one day"
Zim retracted his boom mic of a communicator into his PAK as he walked into a spherical room. At the center of this room was what could only be described as a cross between a flight simulator and a whaling gun, a single seat was bolted in the center of a gyroscopic array of arm cranes to twist it and the controls with an attached sight in any direction. Along the walls dozens of holographic generators currently showing various charts, diagrams, and video footage of different places in the sol system. Zim tapped a few controls and the displaces went black, with the exception of the Irkin symbols meaning "Gravity Harpoon Activated".
Zim chuckled darkly as the images on the walls began to show Tak's pod and a lock-on indicator that seemed to fly around the simulation at random. The chuckles grew to insane laughter as he lined his sight onto the craft and began to adjust the instruments until his indicator was on the target, if shaking slightly. As the two crosses overlapped he pulled the trigger, and the lock-on turned from red to green as a new message appeared which translated as 'Firing'.
In the seldom used and never seen backyard to the base a synthetic tree, that seemed to have parts jetting in and out of the surrounding buildings, moved several branches on there own to revel a large metallic ball on a tentacle like arm near the base of the trunk.
Said ball opened backwards into a circle of wedges, in the center of which sat a sickly glowing yellow cube. Each wedge began to glow the same as the cube and slowly rotate as the squid like arm snaked its way though the branches, even as some continued to shift to move out of the way, until it reached the top of the fake tree.
The arm moved the opened ball and positioned it to a specific area in the sky. As soon as the machine stopped it began humming, in sync with Zim's firing.
As Tak breathed heavily in her coma like state alarm after alarm flashed though the room in a dark blue, but made no noise so the vindictive alien did not stir. However MII did, and to her, and by extension her creator's, credit immediately began to try to keep the pod on course.
It would prove a vain effort and the salvaged wreak began to subtly change directions.
Gaz herself, or rather her 'dolls', had to move her belongings for when she would blow up her house brother and all. Course in order to do this she needed both a place to first store her stuff and a place to live when it blew, and to do either she needed money and for money she needed her father, who was difficult to get in contact with at the best of times let alone after a disaster.
As she proceeded with the test of patience that was call waiting the future Irkin couldn't help that she should blow her father up as well for making her wait, especially with her at death's door.
All ready four hours had passed and with no end in sight. But that fact was irrelevant in the end, she would soon no longer be human, let alone a membrane, and if everything went according to her plan the little sociopath would use Irkin technology to disguise herself just as Tak did before her. Then pose as some hyper-intelligent adult with some condition, that keeps her from growing, by selling things stolen/scavenged from Tak's ship and Zim's lab and passing it off as her own.
Her room was in many ways a testament to her personality and philosophy, which simply 'I am better than you so I will take what I want'. The room itself was rather uninteresting, but everywhere there was space there were shelves full of now outdated game consoles and the games for them. She sat on her bed, more like a nest of covers with small tables and lamps clustered around, as she went through the agenda. Yes Gaz couldn't help but feel delightfully devious from this plan, Zim said so himself that he was going to blow up the ship and leave his base so he most likely would never know.
"Still that water thing will be some trouble" she mumbled, in fact the more she thought about it the more surreal it seemed that soon enough she would be a different species.
But no matter how she turned it in her head the advantages outweighed every disadvantage, after all few things outweigh your only chance at life.
Even on his worst day Dib was optimistic, if he wasn't he would have lost faith in his cause after the first dozen mocking lectures from the Swollen Eyeballs or the hundred or so beatings from his classmates, regularly even the girls or on a particularly bad day when his sister beat them to the punch.
But even he had to admit the 'education box' was mostly a bust, five months fiddling with that ship and the first break in his Alien Crusade was the Irkin equivalent of one those movies the show in health class.
Granted he learned a number of their strengths and even social structure, but he was back to square one when it came to any weaknesses. Well outright weaknesses anyway, Dib learned firsthand from Zim that what most would consider a strength could be warped back onto yourself. Forcing you into a losing spiral where what you once depended on was what was now making you weak.
He would never forget that damned holoworld. Tricking him into thinking he had become the hero he always aspired to be,as well as taking advantage of his belief that his fellow humans would, out of the goodness of their hearts, commend all he has done. Just for it to be a dream to give his archenemy information.
Honestly he was lucky Zim was egotistical enough to only think about getting revenge about the muffin instead of asking about the Swollen Eyeballs and considered his fathers work too primitive to be concerned about. Or the green invader could have just left him in their for who knows how long as a way to keep Dib away from some scheme.
So the only question was, how to turn what he learned back on an Irkin? Well they go creation to death controlled so if someone somehow jammed that control signal Zim might become incompetent, more so than usual at least. Or he could go a different route and use his new found knowledge to fool Zim into thinking he managed to hack Zim's base?
So in his room Dib happily hummed, that optimistic streak strong as ever, as he thought ways to end Zim's reign of evil. Putting his ideas into the computer stacked in the corner, which was more like an alcove with how the bed was above it like a second roof to save space in the clustered room. Every space was used in some way to try to prove the existence of one of hundreds of paranormal creatures or events, even if Zim had unintentionally conquered over half of the space, with plans of how/when to investigate as well as what specifically could be evidence to prove it was real.
Little did he know the day after tomorrow would test that optimism to the brink.