Zita considered herself to be a patient woman, the fact that everyone else who knew her would consider her an impatient brat of a girl who bullies and torments others for her own pleasure is an unrelated matter, but this was too much.
Not only did that fire ruin her birthday by stealing all the attention from her but now her family was expected to handle food and water rationing, let alone the rolling blackouts caused by the failing grid. Granted they were by no means going to starve, they wouldn't even go hungry really. But it was interfering with her social life. The rich girl couldn't just go to the food court and bask in her own popularity whenever she wanted anymore.
The girl was writing in her diary wile laying on her four poster bed that went well with the expensive, pink and frilly room. Yes her bedroom as large as it was could be mistaken for a picture from a fairytale if not for the varies high-end, top of the line electronics, T.V., stereo, and so on.
This room could truly be fit for a little girl's princess dream, too bad it was inhabited by what some considered a creature from hell. This was not a statement on looks, indeed she was popular for a reason but rather her general attitude. Point to fact wile she lived in the nicer part of town and thus had little to fear the outright anarchy that now governed most of the city she still saw her inconvenience the real tragedy.
In his lab Professor Membrane was undeniably in his element. This disaster, wile terrible, was at least allowing him to field test inventions that might otherwise have been shelved.
Much like the one he was working on now, the device was perhaps nine inches in diameter and looked like a miniature UFO more than anything due to its disk like shape but the center on the top extended in a rounded cylinder. Its light red colored body was overlapped with blue markings and black mirrored spots were in a seemingly random pattern. The whole thing kept afloat by a small jet with six even smaller ones evenly distributed on the edge to keep it balanced.
The good doctor was not especially proud of this particular one, for one thing all he really did was combine existing technology, in this case an omnidirectional camera and just a more miniature version of a jet turbine for movement.
However there was something he just hated about it, it's paranormal design. This always made him reconsider if his own inventions that, at an impressionable age, made his son so adamant aliens and cryptids existed. That would be poetic irony, he spent almost all his time now with these commercial products to fund his own research in psychiatric medicine to cure his son's madness.
All of which was for naught, at least for Dib in truth his research was used to directly treat hundreds of mentally disturbed individuals. So much so that he was directly responsible for alloying the local asylum to redirect its finances and focus to keeping Necrose contained.
No one, not even himself, would ever consider him father of the year but he did honestly care about his children even if they were also experiments. In fact that made them all the more precious to him. After all he was first and foremost a scientist and his children were the best hope to colonize other worlds, creating humans to keep a ship on course and maintained was so much more practical than a generational ship and possible with modern science unlike a faster than light ship.
Now that he thought about it did he ever mention space and other planets in front of Dib? Actually if he could generate that kind of mentality in the future models it might be usable as a way to keep there minds on the mission, and loyal to there assigned jobs. Oh well this hectic work schedule was making his mind a little frayed.
As the good doctor toiled away he was left unaware of the bizarre mechanization watching him. The machine itself was ironically similar in function to the unfinished one below it. In function not design, it was built much like a boxy centipede.
It had five segments each one a dark pink box with two stick like legs on each side, the segment in front differed only in that it had a circle of green light so soft that you could only know it actually glowed in the near darkness of the unused maintenance shaft it found itself in.
The infiltrator had been here for thirteen hours watching Professor Membrane work and waited for him to finally leave. Now it had no were close to the AI capacity of the near sentience that SIR units possessed, but it was Irkin technology and thus could rival the very supercomputers in this lab. And it had just decided that if Mr. Membrane had gone so long without a break he was most likely so out of it that he wouldn't notice itself on it's mission as long as caution was taken, besides the Master was on a schedule.
Without a sound the five segments detached from each other, becoming several machines working on a hive mind. Separate but one they moved though the holes in the tunnel that served no function than to save building materials. Slow but silent they hovered hugging the walls, floor, and ceiling until each one reached some spot from which the infiltrators could connect to the labs mainframe. The little constructs needed in the computer and to do that they needed to get under the casing, this was why they waited for Membrane.
As the main Eye unit watched as each one found their place and began the cutting. They began by tilting themselves up so their legs faced the panel, and then extended the ending tip of each leg. As soon as they were fully drawn the pointed 'feet' started to glow a dark blue. Each machine then started to twirl or rather turn its body from a central point.
The glow was an omission of energy generated by vibrating the metal alloy of the legs at hyper-sonic speeds. They were not cutting the panel so much as vaporizing one atomic level at a time. Ounce though the lesser materiel each leg split in half as wires no thicker than a hair snaked out and connected to the circuitry.
The only way Necrose would, no could describe his new body was 'Incredible', he made it to his destination, an old baseball stadium, in only ten minutes despite it being miles from Zim's base, then he went to work disconnecting the place from the grid, both electrical and any potential for someone coming in, and now he just finished off killing who was already here.
Granted their were very few and that was mostly cleaning staff, the stadiums accountants, and the occasional player here for practice. The point was he wasn't tired, in fact he was bored at the time, with half an hour or so to kill who could really blame him.
Hence why he took the dead and dieing to decorate the stadium with, it was this place where the first real test of what his new body could do was to take place in after all. And if he won it would be the location of his ascension into The Order of Chaos.
He liked the place better this way anyway, the heads on rusted spikes surrounding the field in a rough circle, the skinned...skins of his victims stretched over every archway leading off the turf, and for his personal touch he drained their blood and filled the sprinkler system with it so now the entire field was stained like a fresh corpse.
And even after that he had two minuets to spare before his fight with Tak would begin, ultimately the murder machine was starting to get worried he might miss the fireworks because he had to be here. After all that happened in the city since that disaster and now Zim was going to end it with a show stopper.
Necrose was still unsure what to think of his new master to be honest. There was no denying that he was in awe of what Zim did to the city, and to his own body. And the weapons he would be gifted was tempting in its own right but to mix the scale of destruction the rouge Irkin planned? But it is the fool that blindly trusts and Necrose was no fool, insane yes fool no.
A noise best described as a cross between a teapot's shriek and the scream of a child took his attention.
MII knew that someone took control of the ship but had no knowledge of who, though if It took the time to think of Earth's level of technology the answer was obvious. But the custom job had no time for such calculations.
The SIR like robot was never designed for maintenance, or battle for that matter. It was a med. unit, built to aid Its Mistress in recovering for her final fight with Zim. Well on that task It was performing well given the circumstances, Tak was still unconscious but physically ready for a brawl.
The master plan was simple but rather solid, convert the escape pod into a mix of an medical shuttle and a battering ram. With the idea that as the ship flies she would use it to heal her up enough to fight then have it collide directly into Zim's base. Assuming she won the battle the base would have no choice but to obey her as an Irkin so surviving after would be simple.
However this plan relied on surprise, something Tak no longer had. She would never know but Zim's last plan needed his gravity tow to the asteroid belt and allowed him to pick up her pod's emergency beacon. He had been tracking ever since.
Even if Necrose didn't win the fight Tak would still be in no position to be any threat to his short term plans. After all she would be miles away in an incapacitated state as he had the base self-destruct. But his mid term plans did need her PAK, without it he could never use Gaz the way he wanted.
So it was with great sadistic joy he, along with Gir and Skoodge, watched on his 'T.V.' as Tak's pod crashed into the stadiums bleachers. Though it did not stay there for long and soon rolled onto the AstroTurf below, just as the roof of the stadium slid back up.
Inside the injured Irkin awoke startled and alert. She wasted no time in unhooking any and all machines that attached to her but her PAK, completely ignoring both MII as well as her computer's reading in her battle lust.
As soon as Tak finished she launched out of the pod fast enough to rip the hatch off its hinges, and landed in a puff of dirt. The would be invader took in her surroundings with first rage then confusion and finally horror as she realized her dreams were dead.
"This can't be right, this isn't Zim's base."
Denial of fate is common to every sentient creature, even one as smart as Tak.
"This...Something must have gone wrong, but...WHAT!?"
Laughter, she heard laughter from the top of her pod so turning to address who, mostly to kill them to vent her disappointment and anger, would dare mock her. Tak found herself watching a young human male casually laying on the pod as if it wasn't burning from entry and all of this was completely normal. "Ha Ha Ha Ha, not how things should be?! Oh for want of a nail or rather tack in this case. You know speaking of puns I've been thinking of nicknaming you Attack, from what I heard it would fit".
Dib was ounce again in Tak's former ship, but unlike several times before he now had a set goal in mind. He was seeking to find a way to translate the Irkin symbols into English, and remarkably was making great progress after figuring out that movement across the screen was part of the meaning. The main reason for doing this? He figured out that he could use the ship to intercept Zim's transmissions and from there get his plans before the start.
As such it was complete coincidence that he was there when the ship picked up a distress signal, showing it on a screen to his right pointing in a specific direction and symbols that he knew to mean roughly twenty miles away. "Huh" cocking an eyebrow "didn't know it could do that, and more importantly how is there an Irkin distress call there in the first place?"
Shrugging to himself he decided the best way to find out was to investigate, after all he was a paranormal investigator was he not? And he had the perfect way to get there, a strange chimera of a motorcycle he found broken and abandoned on the side of the road modified with a sphere pulsating with a faint green energy where the front wheel ounce was as well had replaced the side side car with what could only be described as a mini cannon, double barreled vertically, and finally the back was far more rectangular with a single tank tread replacing the back wheel.
This was something Dib had been working on for months, a transport to counter Zim's Voot Runner or at least compete with it. The Voot could go longer with out refueling, better armored, and could fly. But his actually had superior short range weapons and was much better on stealth.
He was still stuck on a name though recently he was leaning toward the Crusader, after all he planned on making these standard issue for the Swollen Eyeballs one day. It was also something of a peace offering to his father, a deal he planned to present to the Professor later that very week. Dib would preform 'real science' as long as his dad didn't begrudge him for his paranormal beliefs and career choice.
A pity he would never get to talk to his father about it.
Minimoose was doing his best to do his mission, but it was tough going. He/It was a weapon, something to simply shoot a huge power beam at a target. Not sneak around as a spy, his 'disguise' wasn't even that good to begin with. But he was the best for this mission by virtue of being the least worst at it.
So it was to his best ability that he had been spying on Gaz since she left The Master's base. Of course there was little to report right now, all she was doing was moving her stuff out of her house. Well her 'dolls' were moving her stuff wile she played on her handheld wile sitting in a lawn chair in her front yard.
Of course Gaz had no access to a vehicle of any kind so she was forced to use an old toy wagon pulled by her dolls. A fact she was annoyed with, an understatement if anything but soon she would be able to use and abuse Irkin vehicles as well as their other technology by forcing Zim to cooperate with her. This was tedious labor at best that the little sociopath hated and rater slow going on top of it.
It was needed though, if she was going to accept Zim's offer as soon as she was finished getting her stuff out of town.