Kingdom Crossovers

by HVK

A reformed Invader Zim has been chosen by the Keyblade and travels the multiverse alongside Calvin the magical alchemist and Hobbes the tiger knight, while in the shadows, a hidden conspiracy seeks to conquer the multiverse with monsters born from a dark titan with a hollow heart.

2. Of Machines, Missings Kings, And Lunacy

Hi everyone! I'm back again, with what I hope is a more flowing chapter. Those of you who've paid attention may have noticed that I tend to deviate from the KH storyline a bit; I can promist you that's it's only going to get weirder from here.

Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, Invader Zim, Calvin and Hobbes, or anything copyrighted inf this chapter. I do own the concept of the Portal Generator.

I've a lot of work to do.

I'm not sure exactly why, but that's besides the point.

Sometimes though, I wonder why I ever listen to you,

it always leads to me getting hurt. Then again, who else are they going to appoint?

I hate being the only one that knows how to do this sort of thing at all

and always having to be the one that ends up doing something stupid

and takes the big fall.

And of course, there is the one question that does remain.

What exactly is it that I'm trying to attain?

Yep, we've got a lot of work to do.

We aren't sure precisely what we're attempting,

or where where we're going to,

but that doesn't actually matter. We do have a clue what it is we're hunting.

We've gone off with less that that!

We got a job to do, and we like to think that our word means something.

So we're off to get another adventure under our collective hat.

We don't have a adventurous song to sing,

but that don't matter, we've got a job to do!
Let's go! -You Don't Want To Know. Actually, You Probably Do. But I'm Not Going To Tell You. Or Am I? No. No I'm Not. The Actual Truth of The Matter Is That I Don't Feel Like Telling You And I'm Just That Lazy. Blame It On Shoddy Last-Second Editing. Or The YMCA. They're Good For Everything!

The Western Sea glowed orange, reflective spots glistening upon the water.

Schools of lesser-then-anthropomorphic fish swam just under the surface, above the sea creature community of Bikini Bottom, continuing a centuries-old tradition of putting themselves in a perfect place to get killed.

No one knew just why they did this; presumably, like the lemmings that annually threw themselves over the cliffs in the winter of the more northern areas in a similar manner to the unintelligent and rarely seen though often heard Easily Alarmed Stockbroker, there was a reason. No one cared, except maybe the fishermen, rodent eaters and bookies.

Despite this glaring omission in judgment, they weren't complete idiots, merely half-degenerated ones. Which was why the school suddenly dissolved and separated, it's component fish scattering into silver flakes, their trails discernible by the sunlight glinting off their scales.

Moments after they did so, an enormous sea serpent broke through the water's surface, craning up and towering over all it surveyed. The serpent suddenly twitched, and immediately starting smashing around in the water like a three-year old throwing a tantrum. Immense coils that could crush steel hulls bucked through the water with the distinct qualities of a horse at a rodeo. It dove into the water, swimming as deep as possible, and then abruptly burst out of the water, smashing back into it.

It roared hoarsely, sounding like a badly cast bugle played by a owl with a throat disease. The water around it pulsed, small waves rippling away from it.

Water streaming off it's long face, it shook itself like a dog trying to cast off an irritating flea; and behind the last of it's four crest-spines, two relatively tiny spots yelled, "Yee-HA!"

Unnoticed by it, two personal craft flew by it; a purplish round one and a blue-gray one. They flew through it's roiling coils, turning around and pausing momentarily, as if the ships were staring at it.

"Did you just see a yellow sponge in square pants and a squirrel in a space suit riding that sea serpent?" Dib's voice said over Zim's intercom.

"Isn't that the sea serpent thing Aang told us about?" The Irken wondered.

"This place gets weirder everyday." Dib's ship suddenly veered away.

"Hey! Distraction with sightseeing is cheatery!" The ports of the Voot Runner's engines glowed a bright magenta color, shooting off incredibly fast.

The Dibship subjectively slowed down as Zim caught up to it. They came closer to the surface, ship bottoms touching the water and creating neat little waves.

They veered around each other, criss-crossing in patterns that were happenstance. They continually flew around each other, each waiting for a moment of weakness.

They rapidly approached one of several small islands enclosed within a large collapsed stone wall; it was altogether roughly the size of half of the Hawaiian Archipelago. There was a large dead tree, long since hollowed out by by Zim to serve as another base near a rudimentary dock with several boats, hovercars, spaceships and one submarine currently docked. It was dominated by a sandy beach, the exception being the greenery around the tree. Scattered through it were ruins of some sorts, from a culture that seemed similar to the pyramid building civilizations, but altogether different, more advanced.

It was the largest island on an archipelago called the Destiny Islands, for no reason other than Zim thought it sounded cool. They had been dredged up in a minor seaquake after Zim returned from the war, and he claimed it as his personal property, announcing himself as a nation. Seeing as there was only one other nation now, that didn't mean much.

There was a small crowd milling around a beach on the island in beach, slowly moving towards a large edifice of some sort that was standing on an outcropping just off the coast to the northeast, connected to the island by a bridge.

The Voot Runner flew over Dib's ship and stopped moving in front of it; the Dibship ran right into the Voot, crashing into the shallow water.

It hovered out unsteadily, coming to a sudden stop as it crashed against the beach. Dib stumbled out of it, shaking his head queasily as he realized that Zim had already beaten him to the beach, his ship sitting by a palm tree like a small kitten attempting to pin down it's home; Minimoose was gathering coconuts for some reasons, putting them together in a trapezoid pattern. He circled around the makeshift pyramid, squeaking to himself. He settled onto the top of it with a small inquisitive squeak.

"Yes, carry on, Minimoose." Zim said. "Come, Gir!"

Gir saluted, eyes now red. "Yes, master!" he hopped onto Zim's shoulder. His eyes went blue. "It smells like roast toast on the coast!"

A fried piece of bread with bright green eyes and a tiny crown floating just above his head popped up. "He's right! It does...wait, that's me!" it gasped. "I just made a logical connection from two seemingly unrelated elements! Someone call the media! TIMMY, HELP!" It jumped on a familiar head.

Danny Fenton looked up. "Get off my head!" He flicked the transmogrified faerie off his head.

The toast landed in the sand. "Geez, Timmy's got a popular hair style!"

Unaware of this, Zim turned around and noticed Dib glaring at him. "AHAHHAHAHAHAHHAAAAH! Dib, Dib, Dib. When will you learn that you cannot defeat ZIM!"

"What about all those times I stopped your nefarious plans when you were trying to conquer the Earth?" Dib said snidely.

Zim looked like he was having some kind of apocalyptic seizure. "Buh...muh...gah...WE HAD A PEACE TREATY! NOW YOU WILL SUFFER THE WRATH OF ZIM!"

Zim stood there, holding a dramatic pose.

"Well?" Dib said, crossing his arms.

Zim looked at him with one open eye. "Do not rush me!"

Dib tapped his foot. "I'm waiting."

A tumbleweed bounced by them. They watched it go by.

A sea wind breezed by, carrying sand along the air.

"It's coming to me! In a minute!"

One minute later...

"Well?"

"...Shut up! I HAVE SPOKEN!"

Dib snorted, deciding to leave the matter at that. The tumbleweed from earlier flew out from behind him, landing right by his feet. Picking it up, he looked over it curiously. Looking up, he saw that for some reason Zim was quickly moving away, looking amused for some reason.

He heard a rumbling sound.

Exactly five and a half seconds later, Gir slammed into him, riding him through the sand like a sled. As the sand-dust cleared away, the only evidence of this was a lump in the sand. Gir popped out of it, holding the tumbleweed aloft victoriously. He threw it again, chasing after it happily.

Dib's head appeared from under the sand, moaning. He stood up, brushing off sand.

The tumbleweed bounced off his prominent forehead onto his open hand. "Oh no," he said slowly, the coming events dawning upon him like the nuclear death wave of a supernova that was too close for comfort.

And Gir ploughed into him, propelling him into the sand. Gir popped off the pile of sand again, juggling the tumbleweed and humming the Moose Song, Minimoose squeaking along.

Dib crawled out, mumbling inchoherently.

"Why would there be Russian thistle on a island?" he said to himself.

Shaking his head to clear away sand residue, he saw Zim walked around aimlessly, watching the readout screen on a small device he was holding intently.

Not paying attention to where he was going, the Irken walked right into a boy with an even bigger head than Dib's, topped with hair that looked like the rear end of a duck; they both sprawled into the ground, Zim's knee lodged in the other guy's back.

The big-headed victim of Zim's obliviousness stood up, dropping Zim to the ground. He turned around angrily as Zim got up. "Hey! Why don't you watch..where you're..go..ing..." his indignated yell faltered as he realized who he was talking to. "Zim."

"Neutron."

Dib walked up to them, looking back and forth from Jimmy Neutron's neutral expression to Zim's cold look of dislike. "Uh, did something happen between you too?"

Zim toyed with a roundish sort of object. It was black, with several green diamond shaped spots around it.

It was secured into place by four clamps similar to his spider-leg attachments. He pushed one of the spots on it, opening one of it's sides. He put something into it, mindful of the glowing green orb connected to a spider's webs of wires.

He was in a laboratory, clicking away at his new bomb. Jimmy Neutron watched him for a few minutes, saying things to himself, clucking diapprovingly, and muttering about Zim's approach.

Zim gritted his teeth, forcing himself to ignore what the self-proclaimed boy genius was saying.

"You're doing it all wrong," Jimmy opined. "You should put a quantum deconstruction module around the explosion compression field. That way it'll be more effective."

Zim snapped. "Silence! I didn't come here for you to order me around, human! Shut up or you'll be the first one I test this on."

Jimmy shoved Zim aside, fiddling with the internals with an all-purpose wrench. "You just need to do this...and this..."

"NO!" Zim yelled, stretching a hand out from down on the ground. "Don't do tha-"

The spots on it lit up.

There was an enormous flash, and a sound that could have been a single heartbeat of the world.

When the flash faded away, the lab was gone, an sprawlng wreckage in it's place. Jimmy and Zim were standing stock-still, covered in soot.

Zim glared at Jimmy, who looked notably sheepish.

"You idiot."

"Something." Zim growled.

"Why are you still mad about the bomb thing? That was over three monthes ago!" Jimmy protested.

"I hate being out of the loop," Dib said grumpily. "I never know what's going on."

"Bomb? What bo-oh, that. I was talking about when you took my favorite hat! My Devastasis Academy of Military Learning beret! It was given to me personally by Major General Splook when I graduated, and you stole it!"

Jimmy blinked. "What?"

"It was my hat!" Zim yelled, ignoring Jimmy's attempts to get a word in as he continued to rant. "You asked me for it. I politely told you no with a bazooka in the face like I always do. And you crept into my room in the middle of the night-"

"Seriously, I have no idea-"

"-And then you lost it! You lost my beret! And now you got the nerve to wonder why I can't stand your presence!"

"I didn't say anything about that."

"I wasn't being literal! And you call yourself a genius!"

"You mean the hat you're wearing?" Dib said, pointing at Zim's head.

Zim patted his head slowly, realizing with a shock that Dib was right. He turned to Jimmy, who was tapping his foot impatiently.

"Well?" Jimmy said.

"Well what?"

"You were wrongfully accusing me! I think I deserve an apology."

Twitching, Zim forcefully exhaled. "Fine! You were right and I was..was...garwe...agam...agaee...wrong. Happy now?"

"Yes." He walked off.

Zim scuffed the sand with his boot heel.

He noticed something; the crowd of people, mostly people he and Dib knew, was moving to the strange building he'd seen earlier; it was about twenty feet tall, terminating into a square flat top, which had four pincerlike towers next to it, each making the majority of the thing's height. It was obviously a complicated machine, which was evident from it's structure and the devices built into it.

"What is that? he said to Dib, pointing at the weird machine.

"That? It's...well...a means to travel to other worlds."

"It's what?"

"A machine to open a portal in the space-time continum and trasport anyone that steps in it to another world."

"And...why would you do that?"

"Because I'm tired of being here."

Zim stopped yelling, and he stopped moving. "What?"

Dib looked like he was about to start ranting, and then it looked like he just gave up. "I'm just tired of all of this. All my nights out, all those mornings I spend keeping paranormal events from killing people, all the things I prove and disprove, all my work...it doesn't mean anything to most people. I'm tired of constantly being insulted by people who don't understand what I do. I'm tired of having my theories used by my dad as proof I was institutionalized before. I'm tired of always waking up and knowing that nothing's going to improve. I want to find the other worlds. I want to stop being the butt of everyone's jokes. I just want to get away from this. I'm tired of it all."

Zim didn't know what to say to that.

Dib looked at Zim. "Exactly. Now, what do you say? Want to help?"

He held out his hand.

Zim grasped it, and they shook firmly, the deal sealed.

"It's not like there's anything life-altering going on," Zim said, grabbing the tumbleweed as it flew at him, throwing it at the head of an obnoxious chihuahua.

The libary of the castle wasn't very big, but it was sufficient to house the four there.

It had wobbly looking shelves for the many books there, most of them never read by the King. Well, far as anyone knew anyway. It was a clean room, both due to the general lack of use(until recently, anyway) and the fact that the castle was perfectly capable of keeping itself clean. It didn't always do it, but the possibility was there. The room was lined with painting of the King's various ancestors, all who, dispite running the gamut from the frontier cat Danny Femur who sought out the Weird West in search of tuna cans to the islander chief Gottaeatalotta who introduced the family's obsession with kicking random victims into unpleasant places out of boredom, looked almost exactly like Garfield himself, allowing for differences of ethnicity and small things like that. Except for his great-uncle Wilburt, who had been a wild boar and of course his grandpa Leon, who'd been a lion with bad taste in names.

Under their watchful gaze(which was probably quite literal. This was the Castle of the Comic Kingdom, after all.) Queen Arlene looked over the King's note critically.

"Well?" Susie said, her rabbit helper Mechanized Rabbit Befriendly UNit hopping around her, catalouging the events.

Arlene licked her claws, clicking them together. "Garfield needs to find a better font than Comic Sans GF."

Susie rubbed her temples. "I mean, what does it say?"

Arlene rolled her big orange eyes. "I was getting to that."

The mechinacal rabbit, code-named Mr. Bun, hopped to Arlene's feet, looking up at her with it's digital eyes, green dots in the simplified shapes of a questioning look.

Calvin and Hobbes leaned back against the tall and warped bookshelf, the tiger's tail flicking periodically.

He's more stressed than he's letting on, Calvin thought to himself. He wasn't the only one. The desk where the King did his computer stuff had an unusual emptiness. That wasn't odd in itself; he didn't come here often. But his absence had a notable effect on everything here; the castle itself seemed to cry out it's master's absence. Or possibly just the lack of the kitchen being used.

The pink cat cleared her throat a few times and read the letter aloud.

"Calvin and Hobbes,

Sorry for running off so quickly, but this is something that threatens our very existence. My research over the past few months since my trip a few years ago have confirmed my fears; there's a one-sided war going on, and we've been completely oblivious and we ain't the only ones. We've all seen it; the stars have been disappearing from the night sky, and that's only one part of this. Something even worse is behind this, and something must be done to stop it at all costs..I've had to leave to conduct my own investigation into this situation.

As your King I have a mission for you; somewhere out there, among the worlds, there is someone who has a 'key'. I need you to find him and stay with him, no matter what. That key is vitally important; without it, all hope is lost.

My advice to you is this; go to the town called Traverse Town. Find a guy there named Spike; he'll help you out. -King Garfield.

P.S.:When Arlene finds out, tell her I'm sorry. Or she'll beat me again."

It was signed with the orange pawprint that served as the King's seal.

Susie rubbed Mr. Bun's head absently. "What does it mean?"

Arlene sighed. "It means...we'll just have to trust the King's judgement. Stupid as it sounds." she added in a mutter.

Everyone in the room agreed, vocalizing assent.

"What could make him think that this could be a good idea?" Hobbes said. "I hope he's not in danger."

Calvin thoughtfully rubbed his chin. He stood up from the bookshelf and saluted. "Not to worry, Arlene! Me and Hobbes will find the King and this 'key'."

Hobbes also saluted. "Yeah! You can count on us!"

Arlene exhaled, relaxing. "Thanks, you two.

She frowned. "You do realize it'll probably be dangerous."

Hobbes thumped his armor. "Nothing we don't deal with on a daily basis, Your Highness."

Susie crossed her arms, smiling.

Calvin suddenly remembered something. "Susie! Can you take care of my projects while I'm gone?"

She inclined her head slightly. "Of course. Try not to get yourselves killed; it's hard to find interestingly weird friends."

"Thanks. I think."

While he was looking away, Arlene tossed a book at him; it was a small brown book, a little too small for him. "Huh? What's this for?"

Arlene gestured at the desk. "To chronicle your travels. It'll be his journal."

"Whose?" Calvin looked at the desk; there wasn't anyone there.

"Right here, smart guy."

Calvin looked at the desk and his jaw dropped as he saw the speaker.

A considerably care-worn bone-white skull with white marbles for eye, similar to a Hamlet stage prop, turned to him. It's marbel eyes rolled down, revealing that they were eyes, ones with bluish pupils. Somehow, dispite no means of doing so, he floated off the desk and through the room, bobbing periodically and stopping in front of Calvin's face.

"Huh? Who..whuh...buh?"

"Name's Morte. And I'm assuming you're the guy that taught historians the meaning of 'inarticulate'."

Hobbes tapped his cheek curiously. "And what are you?"

Morte's eyes made a weird expression that might've been the equivilant of a raised sardonic eyebrow for a being with only eyes and speech to express itself. "I'm the mascot for the Headless Horseman club band! I'm a talking floating skull; what did you think I was?"

"Incapable of shutting up?" Calvin surmised.

"Ooh, good one." He hoved by Arlene's ears. "I like this kid."

Floating back to Calvin, he stopped and turned back to Arlene. "So who are these jokers?"

"The human's the Head Wizard of the Royal Magi, and the tiger's the Captain of the Royal Order of the Crusaders. I told you about them."

"Really." Morte clicked his teeth rythematically, which struck Calvin as being similar to someone twiddling their thumbs to bide time. "Don't see what they've got going for them."

"For one thing, skin." Calvin retorted.

"Lot of good that's done you."

"Hey! Boneheaded dolt!"

"Bigheaded munchkin!"

"What, jealous I can make expressions?"

"No, but I can play poker without people guessing my cards!"

"How're you supposed to play cards without hands?"

"Enough already!" Hobbes yelled, grabbing Calvin by the collar and the back of Morte, banging the two irritants together. As Morte and Calvin moaned, the tiger picked up the skull off the ground, staring at him intently.

"Uh..." Morte's eyes went back and forth. "What large teeth you have?"

Hobbes hummed to himself, looking the skull over. A few cracks here and there, but it seemed very well preserved. He flicked him up on his thumb, catching and spining him like a basketball on the other thumbclaw.

Morte forced the spinning to stop, and Hobbes grabbed him, holding him close to his face.

"Uh, I know I'm a looker, but I don't think I like you that way, Cap-"

Hobbes' eyes narrowed as his nostrils flared and his lips curled into a snarl, shutting up Morte. He sniffed deeply, working out the skull's scent. He sneezed. Humming to himself again, he grimaced at Morte and breathed in.

"Hey, I don't smell that bad! It's just a little formalahyde-"

"No, you twit," Calvin said from the floor. "It's called a Flehmen reaction. He breathing in your scent so it reaches the Flehmen gland on the roof of his mouth."

"Oh."

He had a strange scent, in that he almost didn't have one at all besides what he picked up in various places. There was this one really strange one that he couldn't quite place. The closest he could come to was burnt match tips mixed with greased metal. It was considerably faded and extremely old, but to his animal senses, it rang out in a way that he couldn't ignore.

He tossed Morte in the air. "He's clean. More or less."

"Hmmph! I just got manhandled by an overgrown housecat, how clean d'ya think I am?"

Hobbes cracked his knuckles and showed his big claws in a single gesture. "Care to repeat that?"

"Didn't say anything! So, we going or what?"

"We going." Calvin said. He, Hobbes and Morte turned to Arlene and saluted; well, Calvin and Hobbes did. Morte drummed out bugle taps on his teeth, but the idea was the same.

"Your Highness!" they said simultaneously.

She saluted them back. "Good luck!"

Susie also saluted. "Take care!"

The Captain and Head dropped their salutes, nodding. They left the room.

Arlene and Susie realised that Morte was still floating there.

Hobbes rushed up and grabbed the skull, pulling him away. "You're coming too!"

Zim and Dib walked by a few people, most of them glad to avoid Zim's attention, as Dib explained the 'project' to Zim.

It was mostly completed, the only thing remaining was to install a few key components in the internals of the ship.

"Constructions was Jimmy's job, and that's almost done; from what I can tell, that is."

"Shouldn't you have a complete record of everyone's jobs?"

"Ever try to get a lot of people doing one thing at the same time and have a comprehensive report?"

"Good point."

"I just need everyone's report and we'll be able to finish by nightfall."

Dib started yelling, getting discouraged when everyone either didn't hear him over the commotion or just ignored him. "Hey, you-sorry, hey, Rocko-dang it, hey, Jimmy! Jimmy! Aw, forget it."

Zim smirked. "Having some problems getting everyone's attention?"

Dib glared at him. "Oh, and you could do better?"

Zim waved his hand as if shooing a troublesome breeze. "Leave it to me, Dib. Leave it to me."

He placed a finger on what might have been a chin, looking into the sky. He tapped his finger.

His eyes wandered onto a nearby craggy pillar of rock, sticking out of the ground like a subterranean chiminy.

A plan clicked together in his mind.

His Pak beeped, and Gir popped out of the sand, Minimoose resting comfortably on his head.

"Sir!" "Squeak!"

"Gir, Minimoose! Listen well, for I have a plan!"

They disappeared behind a nearby outcropping, muttering low enough that Dib had to struggle to hear them; he couldn't discern much besides Gir's loud babbling, which served as an effective sound-screen.

"Okay, good. GO!" He heard Zim say.

There was some kind of sound behind the rock; he heard vinyl rubbing against cloth, metal, and whatever Minimoose was made of. Then he heard a definite scuffling sound and jets firing.

A moment later, Zim, Gir and Minimoose appeared at the top of the rock pillar, looking weirder than usual, and that was saying something. Zim was wearing a grape suit, with holes for his limbs and head. Minimoose was wearing a little peanut suit, his face, antlers and little feet exposed. Gir was wearing the cat suit Zim made for him after the whole Tak thing. It had nothing to do with what was going on, but it looked adorable. For some reason, they were all carrying maracas.

"HIIIIIIIIIIIIII, E'VYBODY!" Gir shrieked with his perpetual cheer.

Some people turned away from their jobs and saw them on the rock. Several nudged others and pointed at Zim, Gir and Minimoose.

There was a definite change in the atmosphere of the mob; their previously unfocused attitude changed to one that was intently focused on the trio atop the rock.

"Squeak!"

"Aha, well said, Minimoose!"

"Awwwwwwww!" Several people down below said,.

Zim pointed at the crowd. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?"

The crowd stood still. Someone coughed. For some reason, a giant flying mole rat flew out of the sky and carried him to the mythical land of Shambala.

Zim's eyes darted back and forth. "I said, DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?"

"Uhhh, advanced shop class time?" A pink star fish in bathing trunks suggested.

"No. Noo, my poor simple...whatever you are. Iiiiit's-"Gir joined in here. "-PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME!"

Minimoose's antlers sprouted neon signs that said It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time! He also sprouted little stereos that started playing an energetic tune.

And thus, Gir and Zim sang, while Minimoose floated happily to the song's rhythm.

"It's peanut butter jelly time-a!

Peanut butter jelly time!

Peanut butter jelly time!

Whey-up! Whey-up!

There you go! There you go!

The tone of the song changed; Zim and Gir's more relaxed danced suddenly became faster and more frenzied, their posed more frentic. Gir kept doing split-rise-splits, and Zim looked a little like he was shadow-bonking.

Peanut butter jell-ley!

Peanut butter jell-ley!

Peanut butter jell-ley!

The tune sped up to match Zim and Gir's pace. Minimoose started dancing too, bobbing sideways rapidly. By this time, everyone in a position to do so was watching them.

Peanut butter jelly!

Peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat!

Peanut butter jelly!

Peanut butter jelly!

Peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat!"

The song stopped, and they made their final poses; Zim crossing his maracas in a kind of X-shape, Gir standing on his head and making a cresent shape, and Minimoose floating to his side.

Minimoose righted himself, retracting his sign and stereos.

In a sudden roar, the audiance started applauding; Zim and Minimoose bowed. Gir tried, but overbalanced and fell off; on his plummet down, he yelled, "I'm okaaaaay-"

There was a loud smash, and a silence.

"I'm still okay!"

Gir flew off the ground, undamaged, and returned to the rock top.

"Sqeeeek!"

"Yes, he should work on his balance too."

Gir sat to the ground and started morosely scratching out a complicated algorithim that conclusively proved the existence of bacon; Zim was unaware of that and rubbed Gir's head. "What? You got your dance number!"

"Yeah..."Gir sniffled, but I wanted to do the robot!"

Zim stared at him. "Gir, you are a robot."

"Then why can't I do it?" Gir started sobbing incolsolably.

"Tacos!" A guy pushed a food cart said from the ground. "Tacos for sale!"

Gir yipped vocalized happiness and jumped off the cliff, running to the guy.

"Are you following my robot around?" Zim yelled indignantly as Gir ordered enough tacos to kill a powerwalker.

"Buddy, he just put my kids through college!"

At this adorable display, people started throwing things admid cooing and the 'awwwing'. Zim caught one and looked over it. "A complete and up-to-date report on the machine's construction from when I started singing? That's convienent."

Jumping down from the rock, the zipper snagged on a twig and he fell out of his suit, landing by Dib. "Got the report!"

Dib was giving him a look that made him look like he just saw an orca jump on land and start tap-dancing to the tune of Sunkist Tuna.

"What?" the Irken said.

"What was that about? Since when do you do dance routines?"

Zim crossed his arms and turned away huffily. "What? Invaders aren't allowed to pursue interests in the liberal arts?"

"Technically, you weren't an Invader after Operation Impending Doom One."

Zim snorted. "Bah! You speak of bygones, man."

"Not so bygone it doesn't sting."

"Shaddup!"

Dib consulted the list. "According to this, constructions almost complete. We just need the power core to be properly regulated and aligned, and some materials to finish the exterior. I'll do that last part."

"What about me?"

Dib 'hmmm'ed to himself. "Well, I originally had evisioned a bigger part for you, but that was before it was almost finished. So I think you could do the power core thing."

Zim thumped a fist against his chest in a declartory gesture. "Of course I can! Never doubt me!"

"Yes," Dib said dryly. "Of course." He went back to the list. "But first I have to complete my part. Otherwise-"

"Otherwise?"

"We could spontaeneously teleport a miniture supernova into Nicktown's power center, killing everyone and everything within eight light-years almost instantly."

"That's a distinct possibility? No one told me that was a distinct possibility. Why did no one tell me that was a distinct possibility?"

"The point is, I gotta go get those parts activated."

"So where are they?" Zim said.

Dib laughed. "Right over there."

Calvin, Hobbes and Morte walked and in one case floated down a slanted tunnel, flickering shadows dancing across their face and shed by the floating torchlights that illuminated their way.

Calvin fidgeted; he hated uncomfortable silences. Judging from Morte's looks, he felt the same way.

Hobbes didn't particularily care; being an cat, he disliked noisey things in general, which was odd considering who his best and only real friend was. Silence was a rare and gratefully accepted commodity in his life.

Placing his hands behind his head in a carefree and relaxed way, Calvin cleared his throat. "So, Morte. Who were you before you..y'know, the skull thing."

"I'm the head of Vecna."

Calvin stopped walking, staring at him blankly as his arms slumped. "The head of what-now? Ancev spelled backwards? What kind of anagram is that?"

"Never mind. I used to be a sage of some kind in my old life."

"And the skull business?"

"I, uh, don't really like to talk about it. Painful stuff from back home."

Hobbes' ears twitched back and forth. Morte was being evasive. "So where are you from?"

Morte's voice waxed nostalgic. "Me? I'm from the Planes."

Calvin blinked. "'The Planes'? Never heard of that world."

Morte rolled his eyes. "That's because it's not a world like you know 'em. The Planes are, well, it's hard to descripe. First thing you should know is that world's like this one is what we call a Prime. As in one of the Prime Worlds. Where I've lived most of my life is Sigil, the City of Doors."

"'Doors'? Why? A lot of carpenters or something?"

Morte snorted, which was interesting since he didn't have lungs. "It's called the City of Doors because there's portals everywhere, in any space enclosed on all sides. To paraphrase everything, they're swirly blue vortexes that lead to other portals all over the planes. They're opened up with keys. These keys, see, can be anything. Memories, objects, feelings, thoughts...you get the picture."

"...Ah." The skull had an interesting manner of telling, grabbing the tiger and the child's attention dispite their notoriously short attention; that was a heroic feat in and out of itself.

"Yeah. And Sigil itself is a big, big city on a rotating disc enclosed by a big wall at the top of an infinitely tall spire in the center of the Outlands. Which is stupid."

"Why?"

"Well, what I wanna know is how the hell can there be anything at the top of anything infinite, right? And you can't be at the center of the Outlands anyway. Anyway, the Outlands got a bunch of towns on them, aligned to one of the Outer Planes. When the alignment of the town goes to it's Plane too much, it slips into it."

"Explain that again. The slipping and Outer Plane thing."

"They just slip into it. Disappear and reappear in the Plane. And the Outer Planes, from what I understand, are formed from belief. When a Planer dies, they wind up as petioners on the Plane their alignment was closest to."

"So these Planes are made of belief? Of who?"

"Everyone. From the Planes people to you guys on the Primes. The Factions say all kinds of stuff about the nature of the multiverse, the way things are and they're all about what they claim is true. Which is bunk."

"Why?" Hobbes asked.

Morte looked at him askance. "Because the Planes are belief. You get enough people to believe in something, it becomes true. If it's going to change, why bother about it. And besides, what's the point in arguing about them? The Planes are what they are. I say let people believe what they want. Not a whole lot of point in arguing about it."

Hobbes cocked his head questioningly. "Not exactly the most idealistic talking head around, I see."

"Hey, I'm plenty idealistic! There's just no point in aruging about it. The Planes are what they are and there's no point in going nuts over it."

Hobbes laughed a little. "Maybe so. What happened to your friends when your world disappeared?"

Morte looked startled for a minute, then a little confused. Evidently, he hadn't thought about it too much. "I don't know. It happened a few weeks ago, and we were all scattered. As far as I know, I'm the only one who made it to this castle."

Calvin's eyes lit up. "Hey, that reminds me. Hobbes, we-"

Hobbes waved his hand arily, as if shooing away a fly. "I know, I know. We can't let on the existence of other worlds while we're on our mission. Protect the world border and all."

"Order."

"Yeah yeah. Border sounds better."

"These clothes are a bit too conspicuous, don't you think?"

"Yeah, we'll have to change into something better." And without the heat this thing traps.

Calvin smacked his forehead in a cheerful way. "I got just the idea! What about those new clothes you thought of?"

Hobbes shrugged indifferently.

The light quality of the place changed abruptly as they came to the end of the tunnel; they walked through an oblong opening, coming into a large chamber.

It was mostly white, and looked distinctly like a futuristic hanger. A strange ship hung in midair in front of a blast-door, hovering without any visible means of support.

In a far corner, there was a control center, enclosed on all side by walls except for a single sliding door. Inside, Marcus, dark-skinned with frizzy black hair, and Jason, light-skinned with blonde hair almost growing over his thick glasses, were busily fiddling with the controls.

Calvin pressed a button on a nearby communications moniter. It lit up showing the two technicians, dressed in clothes that looked like the crossbreeds of astronauts and air pilots. They looked momentarily surprised.

Calvin spoke into a microphone. "Calvin to Jason and Marcus! Ready to depart whenever you're ready!"

They smiled broadly, saluting him. "Just a few more minutes, Calvin!"

Calvin and Hobbes looked at each other and nodded. They seperated, walking into two locker room; ones with the traditional male sign, and the other with a generic animal sign.

A few minutes passed, the two technicians working on the ship, adding parts, moving others and removing a few, and Calvin and Hobbes presumably changing in their respective locker rooms.

They came out wearing different clothes, these looking really weird to Morte. Different world, different fashion, he thought. Of course, these two probably didn't have any real conception of fashion.

The technicians looked up from their work to Calvin and Hobbes. Seeing their new look, they waved their hands indifferently.

"The ship's ready, Calvin! Prepare to board!" Marcus said, intentionally interrupting Jason's snappy comeback.

The odd ship moved onto the ground by them. It looked a bit like a classical rocketship; it appeared to be made of blocks of alternating stripe of red and yellow, had a triangular nose, two angular wings to the sides, small semi-circular engines, near the back was a round dome housing the cockpit which itself had seats for three, and two guns under it's nose; a three-barreled cannon and a laser blaster.

It opened up and Hobbes grabbed both of them and jumped in, the cockpit closing moments afterward.

Jason hit a few buttons and pushed a springlike thing; the ship raised up and faced the blastdoor again, it's engines starting to fire up; the door had a big orange paw print on it, which was the King's mark.

"I wanna drive!" Calvin yelled.

"What! Are you insane?" Hobbes demanded.

"No! But I want to be the pilot!" Sensing danger, Jason shut down the firing sequence; the engines died down, unnoticed by the ship's occupants.

"No way! Everytime you drive anything, something horrible happens!"

"I do not!"

"Remember when we went back in time and almost got eaten by a dinosaur? Or when we went to Mars and ran into Martians? Or when you tried to drive the Time Machine to the begining of time and almost got destroyed by marauding space pirates?"

"So I've had some bad luck-"

"'Bad luck'? 'BAD LUCK'? 'BAD LUCK'?"

"Sure, blame everything on me!"

"Well if it wasn't always your fault, I wouldn't have to!"

"Say that to my face!"

"What? Your forehead's so big sound can't reach your ears?"

"Hey, guys-" Morte interjected.

"SHUT UP!" They both said, whirling around at Morte.

"Besides," Calvin yelled. "I helped build this ship! I know it inside and out!"

"The same way you knew that spaghetti recipe?"

"Ooh, you had to bring up the Noodle Incident, didn't you?"

"How long do you think they'll keep yelling at each other?" Jason asked Marcus. loosely toying with a screw and reclining on his hoverchair, resting his feet on a table.

"Well, they're still in the coherence stage. They still have at least five minutes before they get into the random insults and fist-fighting stages. So I give it about fifteen minutes."

Jason pulled some money from his pocket. "Five bucks says you're wrong."

"Deal!"

There was a sudden crashing sound from the ship, as a dust cloud of whirling fur and fist rolled around the pilots seat amid the bonks of a hapless skull repeatedly getting pulled into the fight and thrown into the window, only to richochet back.

"Dang it!" Marcus yelled, slamming his fist onto the control panel.

"Heh heh. You win some, you lose some," Jason said, shuffling his ten dollars. "And I just won some!"

"No gloating. You remember article twenty of the Aero Technician's Charter. 'No excessive boastery upon victory in a game."

Jason held up his index finger, shaking it sternly. "You're forgetting Provision 8-1-7. 'If a pilot should win a betting competition in an interesting manner-"

"'Then bragging rights are secured for the next three weeks'." Marcus said tiredly. "I know, I know."

They looked back at the ship; they were still doing that weird dustcloud fight.

Then all the lights flashed green. The blast door slammed open, revealing a enormous series of doors opening in a flight tunnel at least twenty miles long.

The Gummi Ship's engines glowed a gas flame blue.

The two technician's argument was interrupted when they noticed this. They stood up as stock still as military cadets at an inspection.

"Marcus," Jason said slowly. "which button did you hit just now?"

Marcus' eyes wandered over to the control panel; a large red button was pressed deep into the panel.

"The big red one?" he said haltingly.

"Oh. No."

The Gummi Ship's engines suddenly ceased operation, and it fell down through the hole it had been hovering over.

Calvin, Hobbes and Morte were flung into the roof of the cockpit, breaking up the fight.

They looked out the window and screamed.

"Okay, you're the pilot now!" Hobbes yelled, throwing Calvin into the frontmost seat.

Calvin slammed a few buttons as he hit the desk, and heard a blast from the cannon. Yelping in surprise, he said, "Time for some quick thinking!" He raised his hands and slammed them on the desk repeatedly.

"You call that quick thinking!" Morte yelled as Hobbes pulled him off the ceiling and clung to the ground.

Calvin's eyes raced between the blurred wall, the on-coming light from below, and the controls. Come on, he thought desperately, hands clawing the inoperative ship controller. What do I do, what do I do?

He punched the Start Button on the controller, and the lights in the Gummi came on just as they literally fell off the world, blasting through a hollow mountain and past the outer most reaches of the atmosphere in a matter of moments.

In a onrushing flurry of blackness and blinking lights, the Gummi Ship wavered and came to a stop, hovering in the vastness of space.

Hobbes and Morte fell to the ground from the impact. Moaning to themselves, they pulled themselves back up into the other two chairs. "Don't ever do that again," Morte advised.

"Hold on, I think I found the seat belts," Calvin said, pressing a likely looking button.

He heard a wooshing sound, a locking click, and something like vinyl sucking into itself.

He turned around and saw that Hobbes and Morte were pinned to their seats by unnessacarily huge leather straps; Morte was completely obscured by a shoulder strap, and Hobbes was being pushed deeply into his seat.

"'S a little too tight," Hobbes said through his seat belt.

Calvin pushed it again and the belts retracted, leaving them to gasp and breath heavily. He pushed another button, and the engines of the Gummi Ship activated. "Blast off!" he cried.

The Gummi Ship literally blasted it off towards their next adventure, fading to a smaller speck in the eyes of the universe.

"So that's everything," Dib said, looking over his stuff.

He looked back at the Portal Generator. Once it was finished, it would be able to generate spacial tunnels-portals-to almost anywhere in the known universe. Of course, it needed a considerable amount of power to do much more than anything much more basic than move someone across a few miles, as he had explained to Zim.

"So the portal appears between the spires?" Zim asked, pointing at the spires in question.

"Yes! Basically, energy is channeled and harnessed with it, and the spires use that energy to create a portal to somewhere else. The portals stays open as long as there's power, so there's no worries about getting stuck."

"And what will I do?" Zim asked, curious.

"Hold on a moment. I've got to install these." Dib pressed a button on his watch thing, and his ship flew over to him, cockpit open. He climbed in, pushing some buttons on the control panel. Several blocky cannonlike things flipped out from the pods under it, firing blue beams that enclosed the objects.

The Dibship flew away, carrying the things with it. It stopped by the spires, and the metal sheets flew away, expanding open to cover the exposed areas of the spires, clicking onto unseen connectors. The rod flew down to the plate at the bottom, clicking into an octangonal hollow. It disappeared into it, a plate sliding over it.

The weird orb floated into the levitation pods and the pods folded up, the Dibship flying back to where Zim was standing.

Dib jumped out, dusting the sand his landing had thrown up, and pointed back to the Portal Generator. "Anyway, you can do your job now."

"Which is...what? Tell me now!"

"You need to set up the power regulators in the Generation Axis in the base of the Portal Generator. Basically, you need to find the regulators and place them in the Axis. You should be able to reach it through an opening in a pipe."

"What do they look like, these..regulators?"

Dib scratched the back of his head self-consioucssly. "Trust me. You'll know them when you see them."

"Feh," Zim said, walking away and annoyed that he wouldn't be able to do this the easy way.

He moved around the people in his way, not in a mood to cause a potential confrontation. This method was potentially derailed when the crowd became to thick to just push through. Getting an idea, he activated his spider-legs.

The mechanical apendages touched the ground and fully extended, lifting him up high enough to be a victim of the 'how's the weather up there?' joke. He easily moved past everyone, the points of his 'legs' stepping in gaps in the crowd.

He got past the crowd quickly enough, and scittered across the bridge, not wanting anyone to notice his movement. Of course, considering the stunt he just pulled, it was a moot issue, but Zim wasn't exactly the most perceptive individual around.

He stepped down, retracting his mechanical appendages. Zim looked up at the Portal Generator. And up. And up.

It was hard to really judge the scale of the thing from far away, but now that he was in front of it, he found it difficult to believe that he hadn't heard of it until thirty minutes ago, espicially considering that he was planning on moving here.

At the moment, he was standing in front of a big door that even the largest of aliens could pass through, let alone pretty much anyone that lived on this world. He looked around it, observing the curiously organic-looking pipes that extended from the main building into the ground and presumably the understructure like a root system.

One of the nearby pipes had an odd plate on it, like part of a turtle shell.

"Aha!" Zim ran to it and placed a foot on it. It swung inward lightning fast, revealing a stepladder that led down a dark shaft made of the material as the rest of the Portal Generator.

"This must be it. Eeh, looks like the inside of Gaz's mind. AHAHAHHAAHA! Why am I always so funny when no one's around?"

"Oh, I'm around." An ironic feminine voice said from directly behind him.

Zim screamed and fell forward out of shock and terror, plummeting through the shaft as it faded to a grey-black-organish-hey-look-a-stepladder-step-I-bet-I-could-grab-it-ow-that-didn't-work-this-is-going-to-hurt blur for about five seconds before he hit the dimly lit bottom with a dull thud.

He grunted something inchoherent about sneaky humans and blinked. The light quality was a bit odd. Dim electric lights were to be expected in a place rarely frequented, but not this flickering thing. It was almost as if something was in front of him, blocking the light between him and it's source.

He pused himself off the ground and looked up, seeing Gaz.

The human's skin was the same color as Dib's, which was odd considering they both spent a lot of time indoors. Her hair was a slightly muted purple and arranged in large three large curls covering her forehead, with two odd large hooklike shapes under her ears, fairly long and ending just past her cheeks. For some reason, her eyes were nearly closed, making it odd that she could see. Her face had an odd look, more stern than pretty, and her overall body structure brought to mind a waif-type of girl, which belied her true nature. She wore a small necklace that ended with a flat brass object shaped like a stylized skull, which rested on her black short-sleeved shirt. Her arms were thicker than that of the sterotypical younger sister, ending in fingerless gloves. She wore two vinyl purple front-and-back skirt halves, connected by a belt over a pair of loose gray pants ending past the knee. She wore shoes that appeared to be a combination of flip-flops and those shoes you slip on, I forget what they're called. Overall, she appeared to be dressed for the tropics, which seem appropiate.

He quickly scooted back, bumping into the ladder from fright before he gained some control over himself. "GAZ! Hi! Uh, no hard feelings about what I said just-wait, huh?"

She retained the same placid cold look of indifference that she almost always had, but Zim had learned not to be lulled into arrogance by that. He'd also learned that she had a mean left hook and was willing to use it as a reaction to the most seemingly innocent queries.

Her left eye became slightly less squinty, revealing a bit of her yellow-brown pupils as she looked down on Zim, looking more passive than angry.

That was a good sign. She showed no sign of intending impending vengence.

Gaz looked up at the machine they were currently enclosed in as Zim carefully got to his feet. She muttered something in a low voice that sounded negative in tone.

Zim cocked his head and looked at her. "What was that?"

She rolled her eyes and shook her head in annoyance. "Shut up, Zim. If I were you, I'd stop this and just go home."

Zim laughed, pointing a finger at him. "Hah! It is a good thing you are not me, because Zim never quits!"

"You say that like it's a good thing." She turned her attention past Zim.

Zim suddenly turned his sight to the side of the wall, his eyes narrowed in thought. "Wait a minute. How did you get here before I...did?"

She was gone.

He scratched his head in confusion. "That was odd. Ah well. ONWARD TO VICTORY!" he yelled, stepping forward with big strides.

He ran down the only opening he saw, rushing through what looked a little like what people pictured of when they thought of abandoned sewers useful for getting around town.

He came into a large circular chamber that was about twenty-five feet wide or so and had an odd look of trying to replicate a natural scene with artifical means; it looked a bit like a place on the island he'd converted into a place for Gir to play in. He was currently standing on a raised plateau; there was a broken down bridge connected to another plateau; on it was a raised tower with a swing cable-line. Distantly, he saw it ending almost directily above a final plateau, upon which sat a trapezoid machine.

Weirdly, there was a blue liquid pooling around the room; right under the bridge among the broken planks of the bridge and all around the room. It was too thick and clear to be water, but Zim knew one thing; he didn't like it.

He didn't like it at all. It had the vaugely ominous look one normally attributed to a being of living sulfuric acid that wanted to give you a big hug.

Zim thought about what to do momentarily, then jumped on the bridge.

The moment he landed on it, the bridge gave way and he crashed onto a floating platform on the blue liquid. "Ow!"

He stood up, and tried to balance on it as it threatened to completely upend itself. He jumped up as it did, trying to land on the flipped bottom; unfortunately, the edge of the platform caught one of the slates of his sandels and threw him backwards onto something hard, sliding to the ground just as the platform came to a stop. He dazedly opened his eyes to see the few globs bits of liquid settle onto the platform's surface, burning through it like embers through paper.

"Shazbot."

Getting up, he looked around. He was just under the bridge, standing on a small area he'd over looked. It reminded him of a very small beach front. Turning around, he obseved that he had hit a wall.

Something struck as odd about the part of the wall he'd hit. Tapping his fist against the wall, he heard the usaul metallic sound.

He walked back to where he'd landed. There was a slight depression that matched his midsection. He knelt down, tracing his hand along it. There was a very slight drag across it in the center.

His brow furrowed as his finger tapped a barely perceptible small gap. Clearly, there was more to this wall than he'd thought; Zim pushed his hand against the wall on the depression, and sharply moved it sideways.

The wall slid away almost automatically, revealing a small chamber inside.

Zim smirked. "Aha, the old 'hidden sliding door' trick! But why in a basement? It's so stupid." Brushing the thought aside like he did the hidden door, he carefully walked in. Considering the breaking bridge, flipping platforms and acidic liquid, he wouldn't have been surprised by any other insane traps.

It was mostly empty except for a single small object at the center. He walked over to it and picked it up, examining it.

The closest analouge to it was a bolt shaped like a screw. It had the same basic shape, but there were small blinking lights on it's head and the pointed part had bumps resembling binary code.

"This is either the first regulator thing, or a variation toy for rote memorization." Zim joked, placing it in the storage part of his pod.

Thinking about his next move, he looked at the viscous liquid, the unstable platforms, and the fact that the only way to avoid humiliation was to risk dissolving.

His eye twitched involuntarily. "YAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

Steeling himself, he jumped off the platform and landed on the next, using the momementum of it's bucking to propel him onto the second platform. Balancing unsteadily, he jumped to the third one. His foot slipped and he swung his arms wildly, tottering just above the liquid. He suddenly fell forward.

The spider-legs sprang out and stopped his fall, just as his face came within a few inches of the liquid.

He exhaled loudly, the breath stirring up the liquid.

The spider-legs lifted him up, and his feet landed on the plateau. The mechanical limbs retracted into his Pak and he climbed up a nearby ladder in a way remnisicant of a monkey. With a really annoying outfit.

He pulled himself up off the ladder and looked around; there was that tower thing he'd seen earlier on a ridge above where he was standing, and a cave above a stepladder of rocks. Curious, he ran past the tower and to the rocks; he jumped up the first one, climbing up the rest with the aid of his spider-legs. Thinking to himself about how great he was, he jumped inside the cave and retracted the legs, wondering what a cave was doing in a basement.

To his disappointment, there wasn't anything immediately interesting. Muttering under his breath, he started to walk out of it when he tripped over a small treasure chest he'd overlooked. Rubbing his bruised leg, he lost his temper and kicked the chest with footwear that wasn't designed for combat. Predictably, the pain made him jump into the air, holding his foot and yelling in pained fury.

He scuffed his foot on the ground, wincing at the scraping noise. Fuming, he looked at the chest and was surprised to see he'd kicked it open; he bent over and looked inside.

Inside the velveted chest was a bracelets of sorts, four slightly arcing brass plates decorated by a curling script and connected to each other by short chains with three cornered links. Thinking it might be an interesting thing to add to his collection of curios and oddities, Zim stored it in his Pak.

Thinking momentarily on why anyone would keep a treasure chest in a small cave, Zim shrugged and dismissed the thought, leaving the encove, hopped off the rocks and walking down the walkway.

Thinking about his next move, Zim saw a shine from behind one of the legs of the tower from the corner of his eye. "What does that look familiar? And why am I talking to myself in a loud and unnatural manner? And why does that sound familiar?"

He kneeled down, brushing aside some junk. His finger brushed a familiar metal object; he grabbed it and stood up, bumbing his head on a metal beam. "Oof!" He fell down backwards and got back up, massaging his sore head. He looked at the object in his hand, breathing a sigh of relief as he placed the second bolt thing in his Pak.

Zim looked at the plateau, examined the pool of acidic liquid, noticed the lack of platforms to jump across, and leaned against the tower, thinking about ways to get across without bodily injury.

"Hrmmm, I let the flying laser weasels go last Tuesday. I don't have the means to build a cannon right now, the Voot Cruiser won't fit in here, a bear that flies via gas expulsion is too blue collar...maybe I could jury-rig my shoes to be nuclear powered gravity-defying...nah, I don't have any paper clips." He looked around the room aimlessly, searching for something he could use. "And that sky pulley is-" He froze. Zim looked back up at the pulley at the top of the tower that terminated right on the pleateau he was trying to get to. "THE SKY PULLEY!"

He ran to the ladder and nearly flew up it. He grabbed the handles of the sky pulley and jumped off.

It was a bit like flying with the windows open, albeit without Gir sticking his head out the window. Zim laughed happily in the breeze until the line snapped.

"Oh that's not-" the rest of his sentance was interrupted when he crashed into the wall. He fell down, crashing onto the plateau.

"Oooh, this had been a very painful day," Zim groaned, dusting himself off. He looked around, saw some big blocks, climbed up them, and saw a strange device.

It was shaped a little like a cone, twirling slightly and silently. It was made of the same off-gray metal as everything here, and had several slots on it; three round ones and a single tetragon on the top.

Zim crossed his arms and laughed, the sound amplified in the empty basement. "That was easy! Waaait a second...three? I only have two. Something is rotten in..in...what do I call this island again?"

He suddenly realized he was in a precarious situation. A small ball popped out of his Pak and floated in front of him, unfurling into a communcations screen, Gir on the display and busily rolling in a mud puddle with his pig friend.

"Gir! GIR! Your master NEEEEDS YOU!"

"I need to eat cereal!"

"Gir! Be serious! I need you to come to my location underneath the Portal Generator!"

Gir scratched the back of his head with his foot and slapped some mud out. He then barked like a monkey.

"GIR!"

"Okay, okay." The robot said unhappily. "You don't gotta yell at me." He flew off-screen and Zim tapped his foot against the ground impatiently. "Wait a minute!" He suddenly said. "If Gir was sitting there the whole time, then where was the screen recording from?"

Above ground..

"Hey!" Dib yelled, seeing a camera disappear under the sand. "Who hijacked my hidden camera!"

"Uh," Danny asked hesistatingly, "Why do you have robot cameras hidden on a desert island?"

Dib crossed his arms and stared back at him, unfazed. "Oh, I don't know, how'd you get over here so fast after recording me in an embarrasing moment?"

Danny's eyes went back and forth, suddenly turning a ghostly green. "Uh...that's...um...gotta go!" he disappeared into thin air.

Back underground...

Zim was still tapping his foot against the ground.

He saw a smoke cloud suddenly appear in the entrance, and Gir flew in, looking around for him. "GIR! OVER HERE!"

Gir went Duty Mode and flew over to him, landing on the ground neatly and saluting. He reverted to normal and pulled a rubber pig out of his head and smiled dopily, squeaking it.

"Gir! You must listen to me very very very very-" he took a deep breath. "-very very carefully! Do you understand me?"

Gir's head rotated a few dozen degrees, stopping as he stared down his own back. He tried running backwards from his perspective, tripping over himself and giggling.

Zim slapped his face. "Maybe I better rephrase that. Gir, you must listen to me right now! I need you to fly me over to the entrance!"

"Whhhhyyyyyyyyyyy?" the android droned.

"Because I can't walk over there,"

"Whhhyyyyyyyyyyy?"

"Because there is highly corrosive liquid in the way, and I don't want to step in it."

"Whhyyyyyyyyyyyy?"

Zim gritted his teeth, a tension mark visbily pusing on his forehead. "Because it will melt the flesh from my bones, and I don't want that!"

"Whhhyyyyyyyyyyyy?"

"Because it'll hurt, that's why! Are you going to be helpful for once or not?" Zim yelled, Gir's little antannae being pushed back by his yelling. Zim started hyperventilating.

Gir smiled sweetly. "Aw, I know what'll cheer you up!" He started tap-dancing around Zim, his feet little grey blurs that were kicking up dust, circling around Zim as the robot clicking his fingers like castanets. "It would 'cheer me up' if you would cooperate once in a while!" Zim said, looking exasperated as Gir danced around him, ending it with a little snap of his mechanical fingers.

"Uuuuuuuuuuuummmm, OKAY!" Gir grabbed Zim's wrist and activated his feet jets, flying into the air admist a swirl of smoke. Gir flew right through the sky tower, his small body going right through the gaps as Zim narrowly avoided getting hit by then, tucking up into a ball and swerving as best he could. They passed over the broken bridge without incident, and Gir suddenly swerved into the entrance tunnel, leaving Zim's body to catch up moments later. They zoomed up past the ladder, Zim's sandals clicking against the steps.

They suddenly broke into the bright light("Ow! It burns!" Zim yelled), Gir flying over the portal generator.

Gir dropped Zim on the little platform between the four spires. "Hey, wait a minute-" Zim started to say before Gir flew away, dropping under Zim's field of vision.

"GIR!" he yelled, looking over the edge of the platform as a pair of hi-tech binoculars slid out from his Pak and over his eyes. The little targeting thing randomly bounced around the binoculars vision screen, settling on a small gray dot below. The target turned green and magnified, the rest of the screen blurring as it zoomed on Gir, who was sitting near the bottom of the machine trying to play a pipeline like the bongos.

"Hey! Get me down from here!" Zim yelled from his position.

Gir looked up from where he was, looking at the little speck way up high, smiling stupidly. "Saaaaay PLEASE!"

"What?" Zim yelled. "I can't hear you!"

"I said, say PLEASE!"

"Come up here and say that again!"

"Thems fightin' words!" Gir rocketed off from the ground and landed by Zim, in a kind of pugilistic stance. "SAY PLEEEEASE!"

"Please get me down from here."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOkay!" Gir grabbed Zim's leg and flew off, dragging him behind him.

I've nearly been submersed in acid, had to go running around for useless junk, slammed into a wall, nearly broke my foot and had to reason with Gir; my day can only improve from here, Zim thought. A seagull slammed into his face. Maybe not.

Gir's flight jets suddenly spurted out. Zim and Gir hung in the air for a few moments to consider this.

"This is gonna hurt." Zim and Gir said simultaneous. Gir said "Yay!", whereas Zim yelled "NOO!"

They fell down to the beach, and Zim's blurry view of the world disappeared in a rushing blast of sand that grated against Zim's skin that was abrupt cut off when his head connected with something painful.

He sat up out off the sand pile, brushing sand off his head and spitting sand out of his mouth while Gir popped out like a weremole and started trying to build sand castles. "Could this day get any worse!" he complained, putting a hand against the palm tree he'd crashed into. A coconut fell out of it and bounced off his head. "OW! I had to say it, I JUST HAD TO SAY IT, DIDN'T I?"

Gir sat up out of the sand, yelled "WOOOOOOOOO!", and started pressing random emoticons on Zim's raincoat, smiling moronically at all the irritating radio-DJ style noises.

"Stop that!" Zim slapped Gir's hands away, trying to ignore the robot's dejected look and subsequecent sniffles.

"Merry Fishmas!" said Daggert the Angry Beaver as he threw fish guts out off a bucket and onto Zim's head.

The corner of Zim's mouth twitched involuntarily as a small part of his mind quietly said that he probably deserved that. The part of his brain that was obsessive about cleanliness and the avoidance of filth informed the rest of him that there was a steaming pile of rotting fish meat on his head and dripping into his clothes.

He lept out of the sand tunnel, slapping at his head and running around screaming as people noticed him and ran to a safe distance. "AUUUGH! FISH! AUUUGH! FISH!"

Dag, who'd avoided Zim's awareness, snuck up behind Chuckie. "He's your problem now, monkey-boy!" He yelled, forcing the bucket into the unfortunate coward's hands and running off.

"Huh?" Chuckie said, holding up the bucket and looking at it, recoiling at the sight of it's inside being coated with old fish meat. "Ew, fish."

"Eh?" Zim paused in mid-spin, looking at Chuckie with one crazed eye. "Did...he say...FISH!"

Chuckie looked up from the bucket, holding it carefully so his hands didn't touch the insides, and saw a dust cloud coming from a nearby palm tree. "Why am I getting a bad feeling?" He said aloud.

"Why are you talking out loud?" A passing starfish in swim shorts said. "You sound like that creepy big-headed kid."

"My head's not big!" a distant voice yelled.

"I was talking about Jimmy Neutron," corrected Patrick.

"Oh, sorry!"

"Hey! It's not that big!" Jimmy yelled as he swatted several small rocks that were orbiting around his head.

The starfish suddenly clasped his 'hands' to his throat and ran back into the ocean.

Chuckie suddenly remembered the dust cloud from before; it was right in front of him now and before he could react, it collapsed as Zim leapt out of it and smashed into Chuckie, the two of them rolling along the ground.

Zim landed on his feet and held the redhead up by the collar at arms length dispite the preteen's superior height, looking like he would like nothing more than to remove the human's head and use it as the subject of the Mexican Hat Dance.

"I DEMAND THAT YOU REMOVE YOUR GUTS RIGHT NOW!" the psychotic-looking alien shrieked.

"What kind of a sick person are you?" Chuckie yelped dispite his obvious terror.

Zim's eye twitched as if restraint was a thin cord holding back a rock throwing catapult and Chuckie's words were badly aimed throwing knives; any second, it might snap and knock someone's head uncleanly off. "Get..the..guts..off..my..HEAD!"

"But I didn't do that!" He tried to move away from the mass of browninsh gore on the Irken's head. "Why can't you get it off?"

"Because you glued it to my head!"

"But I didn't-"

"Then explain the bucket!"

"A little brown beaver pushed it into my hands and ran off!"

"Huh?" Zim said, looking bewildered and surprised at the same time. He dropped the human, muttering something vaugely apologetic and looked angry.

"DAGGERT! VENGENCE WILL BE MINE!" He yelled. Gir jumped on his head, knocking him to the ground.

"WAAAAH!" Gir sobbed. "I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!"

"Gir." Zim said flatly. "You're talking to a pile of fish innards glued to my head."

"FORTY TWO!" Gir swallowed the fish guts in a single gulp. Giggling and waving his arms, he jumped off Zim's head and rolled around on the sand. "Eighty five and twenty one makes the toenails grow!"

"And that takes care of that." Zim said, brushing his hands together in the universal symbol of 'job well done'.

"...Wasn't that glued to your head?" Chuckie said after a moment.

"I repeat." He wiped his hands together again, crossed his arms, closed his eyes and smiled arrogantly to himself. One of his antannae quivered and his eyes opened, mouth in a weird slight curvy expression.

"GIR!" He ran off to the robot, who looked up and waved loosely at him. Zim swept a leg out and came to a stop, dusting the sand pile-up off his foot. "Giiiiir," he said, crossing his arms and tapping his shoe against the ground. "why did your fuel supply run out so quickly?"

"Oh that. I got rid of it."

"Why would you do that?" Zim yelled, his voice suddenly dropping to an annoyed hiss. "To make room for the tuna? Or for the cupcake? Or something else abombinably stupid!"

"Noooo," Gir said impatiently as he got. "so I can do this!" The hatch on top of his head slid open and a parachute popped out, covering them both momentarily before Gir sucked it into his head again.

"You took the excess jet fuel out so you could hide a parachute?"

Gir rolled his eyes. I think. "If I didn't, then I wouldn't 'ave been able to use it!"

"Then why didn't you!"

Gir shrugged. "I dunno!"

A vein started pulsing on Zim's forehead as he looked dangerously close to blowing something up, then he sagged, sitting down on the ground and sighing. "Why can't I stay mad at you?"

"'Cause 'o me wit and candor!"

"No, that's not it."

He sat up straight, narrowing his eyes in thought. "Why do I get the feeling I got off-track somewhere?" Gir jumped up, waving his hand energetically. "Ooh! Ooh! I know! I know!"

Gir's head hatch opened again as a screen popped out of it on a extension limb and played a really fast and slightly blurred record of the past fifteen minutes, rewinded several times, fast-forwarded, rewinded, fast-fowarded again, and stopped to show a dramatic angle of an angry looking monkey in a nice blue suit pointing a finger at the upright corner of the screen.

It panned to show the set of a game show and the monkey pointing at the neon banner of it from behind one of the game show host things that resemble pulpits.

"Yes," the monkey said cheerfully, looking happy now, "You're on-"

He, two of the three contestants poised on comfy chairs and the audiance read the title on the banner all at once. "BLOCK THAT KICK!" The monkey moved out from the pulpit-like thing to reveal that he had a huge steel-toed boot on his right leg.

"All right, all right. Contestant Number One, be prepared to...BLOCK THAT KICK!" he yelled at the contestant in the middle.

"Huh?" the guy in question said daydreamily.

The monkey jumped into the air, landing a kick directly in the man's groin. "AUUUUUUUUUGH!" he yelled as the audiance roared amusement, falling to the ground as the monkey pointed at the guy to his left. "Contestant Number Two, get ready to...BLOCK THAT KICK!"

He went into another running kick...only to pass right through the man. "Huh?" the game show host said in surprise. "Fooled you, didn't I? You can't kick me like that, 'CAUSE I'M A GHOST! BOOOO!"

"Huh. Really?" The monkey said, looking interested.

"Uh huh. Really. I died many years ago at that hands of your father in a similar show called Block The Rock! It took many years, but I finally wrestled my way to this unlife to take my revenge upon you for my tragic demise!" the ghost yelled.

"Really." The monkey said blandly.

"Yes, really! BOOOOOOOO!" the ghost yelled, floating over the monkey and waving his arms around dramatically.

The monkey watched the display, looking bored. "Is that it?"

"No, I can also do...this! BEHOLD THE FACE OF ULTIMATE TERROR!" The ghost ripped his face off, revealing the visage of a nerd with a huge nose, crooked oversized teeth, and an L shaped indentation on his forehead.

"That..that's not really that scary." The monkey pointed out.

The ghost tore the face off, revealing his old one. "Huh? You think so?"

"Uh huh." "Oh, yeah, definitely," the audiance added. The remaining contestant had fallen asleep from boredom, whereas the failed contestant was still writhing in pain, weeping for his lost children.

Looking uncomfortable, the ghost said, "Well, I am a ghost! Look, see!" He thrust a hand right through the monkey's head, waving it around. "That's pretty scary, right?"

The monkey slapped the hand away. "Sorry, not really. I mean, maybe if you were a disembodied voice, but um, no. In fact, I find you rather pleasant."

"Da-wait, can I say damn on TV?"

The monkey looked at an off-screen camera man, who nodded. "Think so, yeah."

"Okay then." The ghost went to the floor on his knees, yelling melodramatically. "DAMN IT ALL! I wish I were dead!"

The monkey managed to look sympathetic and valiantly attempted to pat the ghost's shoulder. "I'm not sure exactly how to break this to you."

The screen went blank, retracting into Gir's head. "And that's how they proved there was no such thing as good regional access cable shows!" the robot said, spreading his arms.

"Of course, of course!" Zim said, slapping his forehead lightly. "It seems so obvious now! Waaaiit a minute...now I remember! DIIIIIIIIIIIIB!" That last part he yelled as he ran off into the distance waving his arms agitatedly.

Gir held his hands together by his left shoulder, craning his head towards his clasped hands, sniffling. "They grow up so fast...G'bye Melville!"

A nearby whale in a bodybuilder outfit waved to him. "Seeya next migration!" The whale walked underwater, a small stream of bubbles following it's descent.

Zim climbed up a palm tree, his binoculars flipping over his eyes. "Dib-Dib-Dib...no, not him-wait!" He jumped off the tree, hovering to the ground via his hoverpods. He rushed to a random spot, people running to get out of his way.

"DIB!"

The paranormal investigator turned aside, backing away a little as Zim ran to him, tried to scoot to a stop, slipped and hit a tree. Backing away before the coconut fell on his head, he stood up and brushed himself off.

Zim suddenly remembered why he was running and pointed a finger dramatically at Dib. "YOU!" He said angrily. "What's with the basement! And where's the last bolt thingy?"

"I don't know what you talking about." Dib said, looking confused. "Neutron was in charge of the construction plans."

"Neutron." Zim hissed, looking for the big-headed boy genius.

He ran off again, a small dust cloud following him.

A large sweat drop formed on Dib's head. "What has he been drinking?"

Zim hid behind a tree, wondering briefly why there were so many of them here. He poked his head out the side and saw a skinny human nearby, of teen-age. He was of average height, had forward facing black hair and black eyes. He was currently wearing a white shirt and blue jeans. Zim took a moment to catogorize this human, and realized it was Danny Fenton.

"Danny!" he yelled. The ghost-boy looked at him, not very startled. "What?"

Zim slumped, disappointed at a lack of a more interesting reaction. Picking himself up, he said, "Have you seen where Neutron hid one of those bolt things?"

Danny considered the question. "Hmm, a bolt. A bolt-Oh, right! I think I saw Jimmy hide it in the secret place your robot goes to."

"Huh? What secret place?"

Danny pointed with his thumb at a waterfall behind him; the outlines barely visible behind the waterfall.

"Oh. That." Zim said blandly. First, I deal with Neutron. he thought angrily.

"Waiiit a second," he said slowly. "How'd you know about that place?"

Danny shrugged. "Me and Tommy are going to investigate later. The readings on that place are off the charts; might be why Gir's always there when you're here." He frowned for a moment. "You know, a lot people wonder...are you and Dib really friends?"

Zim blinked. "Why do you ask?"

"You two are so competetive it's hard to tell."

Zim snorted. "We are not that competetive."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Sure. And that giant robot fight last Tuesday had nothing to do with you guys trying to outdo the outher with a giant fighting robot."

Zim looked a little uncomfortable. "Well.."

"Or the other hundred and a half things that for some reasons always seem to involve mass destruction. And the near-end of the world."

Zim's eyes shifted back and forth. "Well..uh..that is too say..me and Dib have a very..interesting friendship and look at the time, gottagobye!" Zim ran off, foolishly thinking he'd won the argument.

Danny rolled his eyes. "And people say my life's weird," said the human who was half-ghost and routinely transformed into his spectral side to beat up phantasms and return them to the etheral dimension from whence they came.

Zim, currently occupied in finding Neutron, stopped running when he saw a fat human boy and a skinny slight insane looking Hispanic boy guarding what appeared to be a simple rock. "Could this get any easier!" Zim said to himself quietly.

He proudly walked out from behind the tree, tapping the llama fanatic first. "Ahem."

The human in question yelped in sheer terror, running behind the rock.

"Wait! Wait!" Sheen yelled, pointing at Zim excitedly. "I know you, I know you!"

Zim raised an eyeridge. "You do?"

"Yeah, yeah! Jimmy told me all about you! You're Mork, right? Look, Jimmy said he was sorry about the whole thing with the hot pants ray gun and your pants-"

"I'm not Mork."

Sheen stopped mid-rant. "Really? You're not?"

"No."

"Of course you're not. You kinda look more like a Mataua!"

Zim blanched. "What?"

"Yeah, you know, Mataua! It sounds like a guy with a bad complexion and eye problem!" Sheen 'explained'.

"How many times am I going to have to tell you this? I'm an alien, and you know it!"

Sheen waved his hand arily. "I know, I know-Hey, that skin problem looks really really bad. Hey, I know what's wrong with you! You got a case of Nectocugs!"

"Nectocugs." Zim said blankly.

"Yeah, them! They're these little bugs from your home planet that lay eggs in your brain and possess you until they hatch and then they pop out like your head a spaghetti grater but it's grating worms and not spaghetti and it's totally gross and stuff."

Zim slapped his forehead. "First of all, those are from Zorbar. I'm not an Zorbarite, I'm an Irken. And two, those are from a comic book. That you wrote."

Sheen rolled his eyes. "Way to kill the mood; I was just trying to help the conversation along."

"Um, Sheen?" Carl said from behind the rock. "I get the feeling we're forgetting something."

"I know! Your name! It's Mike, isn't it?"

"No."

"Tommy?"

"Uh uh."

"Zorro?"

"Ne-gative."

"Tyson? Splook? Naz?"

"No, no, no."

"Miz? Zib? Diz? Mib?"

"Hell no!"

"I give up! This is too hard."

"I'm wearing a name-tag!" Zim yelled, tugging on a pocket on his raincoat and producing a loud Duuuuh! noise.

"Way to spoil the game!"

Zim slapped his forehead again, noticed the rock, and pushed Sheen aside.

"Well, well, well. Your pathetic disguise has been pierced! Now you will repay for your attempt on my life!" Zim placed some gloves onto his hands, where they morphed into sparking power gauntlets; he jumped at the rock, pounding on it.

Carl and Sheen stared at him beat the rock up and yell excessively loud. Flecks of rocks flew off admist nonsenscical jabber, and they continued to watch him roll around them, wrestling with the rock and appearing to be on the losing side.

"And you wanted to go to the movies." Sheen said to Carl accusingly.

"In the movies, crazy aliens don't try to shoot you." Carl said defensively.

"Didn't that happen about three days ago?"

"Yeah, but they didn't yell so much. This alien scares me."

"Aren't you scared of opossums?"

"They're crosses between rats and kangaroos! They're scary!"

A part of the rocky cliff-side shimmered and disappeared, revealing Jimmy Neutron. He pocketed a strange looking remote and walked inbetween Carl and Sheen. He looked at Carl, then at Sheen, and stared at Zim too.

"So what do we've got here?" he asked.

"I think Zim's mad at you, and for some reason he thinks you're that rock."

"Ah."

Zim and the rock rolled by them, and he threw it, his triumpht laughter fading away as he gradually noticed Jimmy. "AHAHAHAHAHHAA-ha hah...hah."

Jimmy crossed his arms. "And what reason do you have for wanting to beat me up now?"

Zim snorted. "Care to explain why you filled the basement with acid?"

Jimmy blinked cluelessly. "Acid?"

"Yes! Blue thick liquid, burns a lot, ring a bell?"

"That wasn't acid. It was-"

Zim didn't care what it was. "Then why did it burn the platform?"

"The platforms are constructed of a material that sizzles on contact with the liquid. It was a joke."

"A joke."

Jimmy shrugged. "Yeah, a joke."

"Oh, that's really funny!" Zim said, laughing sarcastically. "So funny I think I'll beat the crap out of you later!"

Jimmy started to sweat. "Wait-"

"Shut up." Zim snapped, already walking away.

He ignored people's glares as he walked back to the secret entrance; Zim walked through the waterfall obscuring it, wondering why it wasn't worse.

For a while, he walked down a winding tunnel that reminded him of the internal structure of a snake, though the smooth and well-worn surface of it reminded him of the warrens used by the now mostly-extinct Pelarota people. Admittingly, a true Arburian tunnel would be a lot wider and the surface would show the sanding done by their bony armorplates and not the curving shapes, but the essence was there.

As he walked down it, he wondered briefly what sort of Earthian geological processes would create those shapes on the wall. They were interestingly similar to what Earth authors frequently used as magical looking writing, making him wonder if ancient abrigiones had seen these and been inspired by them.

Being an Invader, in human terms, was a bit like a combination of being an anthropologist, spy, and explosives fanatic. Zim was good at all three aspects-okay, maybe not the first one and definitely not the second one, but it counted all the same.

As he walked down, Zim noticed the increasing repetition of some designs was decidedly unnatural; you might see something like this on the nanotechnological planet Galvan B, but not on a tunnel in the middle of a cliff on Earth.

"That's...not usual." he said aloud.

He kept walking, thinking about the designs when he realized he'd walked right into an open chamber. Two small pods slid out of his Pak and lit, illuminating the place.

It wasn't very big, maybe about sixteen feet all around. It was round, and the designs were more prolific and were genuine pictures. He lacked the cultural reference to understand most of them: some of them reminded him of the Biblical account of the fall of the tower of Babel. One's swirling designs, jarring lack of paint and up-wards pointing marks made him thing of an immense structure rising among the stars. The only other old ones could comprehend were some of the oldest; the walls were covered in carved writing from a dozen different langauges. He looked them over, and realized they were all names. Hundreds of names overlapping each other made them incredibly thick in some places, in others mostly covered by pictures yet still legible. He had no idea what they meant, nor what tool carved those names into the wall.

So many names. He wondered what it meant. For some reason, the names reminded him of the old ruins scattered throughout the island.

Several of the drawings he recognized; they were such things as a cariciture of himself frying sausages with a dopey smile(complete with his toungue hanging out of his mouth)wearing an apron. Another showed Dib standing on top of the world with a sign hanging around his next saying Dib #1!, and he looked enormously happy for a change. A third one displayed Gaz, playing her games while walking down a completely deserted street. Another showcased a tiny cute Zim sitting atop a giant question mark. Then there was a picture of Gir sitting on top of Zim's head; by the looks of the creases of Zim's head, he'd been there for a while. The images had a slightly blurry dreamlike surrealist quality mixed with a much sharper definition in general details. That struck him as extremely strange.

It was strange because he knew who'd drawn these pictures. He knew Gir's handiwork. And from the looks of it, it was only Gir who'd come up here. Evidently, he was a better artist then he let on.

It was then that he noticed the door.

It was at the back of the chamber, untouched by the artwork marking the rest of the place. It wasn't strictly a door, but it suggested one; a bulging portion of the wall, with subtle division lines along it's perimiters and through what could have been it's middle. Everything in the room seemed to subtlely point to it, as if it was central to this place in a way he didn't understand.

He placed a hand on it, looking for a way to open it, but there didn't seem evidence for it being anything other than an interesting accident of geography other than gut instinct.

His foot brushed something metal; he picked it up and saw to his relief that it was the final bolt.

Behind him, the shadows in the dimly lit room shifted.

Zim suddenly stiffened, his antannae twitching sporadically. His breath hitched, and he felt...cold. He looked down at the shifting shadows and felt the chilled whisper of something familiar.

On instinct, he turned around and saw something that made him wonder why he didn't run away at the first sight of it.

It was a figure standing in front of the tunnel's entrance, smokey shadows slowly and silent swirling around it, undisturbed by the light of his lamplike extensions. It was several times taller than him, perhaps six feet tall. He had no idea what it was, human or otherwise; it wore a black leather coat that had a hood completely obscuring it's face. It's hands were concealed under it's voluminous sleeves, arms crossed together and sleeves overwrapping each other, and the cloak itself appeared to be a single piece, wrapping around it's wearer's body and feet. He couldn't discern if the coat had any real detail on it; it was that dark.

It raised it's head, light shining directly into it's face and illuminating nothing but more darkness. It shuddered momentarily, as if direct contact with light disturbed it. It looked past Zim, as if it barely registered his presence, and stared intently at the door behind him.

It shifted it's view and looked directly at Zim, apparently registering him for the first time. It regarded his curious look, and he felt a sense of vauge interet from it's otherwise impenetrible emotional shield.

It spoke, it's voice elicting a barely controlled shudder from Zim; it was calm and old. It had the oddest sense of sibiliece, reminding him of the hiss of a reptile. There was an arrogant self-assurance in the voice that seemed to be the by-product of countless years of being better than everyone. And weirdly enough, it was, well, charming. This was a voice that had been built up by charisma and had retained that quality, however corroded it had become since since then.

"I have come to see the door to this world."

The swirls of darkness emanating from the stranger swarmed over the chamber, as if longing to envolup it. They encircled the perimater of Zim's light as best they could, wary to venture further.

Dispite it's words, it didn't seem to him like the sight-seeing type; he'd heard of murderers who investigated their victims lives, savoring the sight of the loss they caused, reveling in the pain. Perhaps this thing was similar.

"Go away." Zim advised, glaring at it. He had little tolerance for paranormal monsters and less for sadists.

"It has been connected...tied to the darkness. Soon to be totally eclipsed." it said, apparently feeling as if it was clarifying something.

"What are you?" Zim said in frustration. "You're not from around here at all." It sounded like the paranoid ravings of a bigoted redneck, but it was true; it was so...alien to everything Zim understood, down to his bones.

It stared unwaveringly at him. "You do not understand what lies behind the door. You do not know of the truth behind all truths. Soon, that will change."

"What?" Zim said, sounding surprised and annoyed.

"There is so very much to learn, sparkling." It said smugly. "You understand so very little. Your light illuminates only that which you perceive, and then only that in front of you."

"We'll see about that!" Zim challenged. Dispite his bold words, his uneasiness about this being was almost inexpressible. It was fundamentally wrong. It's very existence was a fallacy; this he knew, in a place far deeper than his rational mind could persue.

The shadows swirled around it threateningly. It didn't have to move to let Zim knew it believed that in personal combat with itself, the Irken would be severely outclassed.

"A effort almost as meaningless as your worthless existence. One who knows nothing can understand nothing."

The shadows veered threateningly at him, swirling with a strange force that he recognized as hunger.

"And you are less than nothing." It said coldly. "Little green fool; you always try so hard...and fail each and every time."

It diverted it's attention from Zim to the door. Zim followed it's example, trembling with rage. It's words sounded familiar, but he couldn't quite remember from where.

The door was gone, replaced by a smooth expanse of rocky wall. And when he turned around again, so was the strange being and it's entourage.

Shaking his feeling of coldness away, Zim ran out of the tunnel, content that the stupid running around thing was almost done.

His steps echoed in the empty chamber, and faded into nothing as he left the tunnel into the welcomingly bright sunlight.

In the chamber, something stirred.

It looked around the room, retreating back into where it had come, sensing it was not yet time.

Their hold was not completely solidified. But it would be soon.

Yes, it would be very soon.

Oblivious to this, Zim paused at the waterfall, hoping that it might wash away some of the self-doubt the creature's words had inflicted upon him.

All it did was irritate him a little and aggrivate his mild hydrophobia

He focused his mind on the job at hand, trying to forget what had happened with the stranger, but the coldness stubbornly refused to leave him.

Shaking it off, he resolutely walked forward. Seeing Gir near him, he grabbed the robot's arm without stopping, Gir waving cheerfully to a yellow sponge wearing a water-filled space-helmet, white shirt, brown pants and little shoes, all molded to his specific body shape and a squirrel in a spacesuit of some sort.

"Bye Spongebob! Bye Sandy!"

"Bye-bye, little robot friend!" "Seeya Gir!" A sea serpent poked it's head out cautiously. "Oops, there's our ride!" Hearing Sandy's voice, the aquatic mystical reptile screeched in terror, trying to swim away before they could catch it.

Gir squeaked in pleasure and looked at Zim, smiling and squinting his eyes. "Where we going?"

"Back to the basement. Are your jets refilled?"

"Uh huh!"

"Very good. To THE...basement..thing." Zim grimaced. "So much for my big dramatic call."

Gir took him at his word, activating his jets dispite his protests and flying into the pipe entrance, through the tunnel, over the pleateaus, and landed on the third pleateau.

He dropped Zim and started rolling around on the floor, yelling "WOOOOOOOOOO!"

Zim stared into space blankly, dazed by the incredibly fast journey. "I don't think I can do the exam, General Magnigaran; I got the brain worms again."

He shook his dizziness away, and turned to the pedastal. He cracked his knuckles, muttering, "I hate this part," and pulled the bolts out. Looking them over, he didn't see any notable differences between them.

Sighing to himself, he put the bolts on the ground preparing to put them in.

"Master!" Gir yelled, running up to him and pulling at his shirt, jumping up and down. "Master! Master! Master! Master! Maaaaaaster!"

"WHAAAT?"

"Whazzat?" Gir pointed innocently at the pyramid-shaped thing.

"It's an edifice."

"Oh. Can I eat it?" He'd appearantly picked up on the first three letters.

"No. This be serious work that we do!"

"Awwwwww."

"You can eat when we get home! Now, I suspect that these bolts are conductors of enviromentally based energies that will be channeled through the power supply and used to power the Portal Generator in order to successfully transplant us into another world system! However, I fear that it will result in a electromagnetic backlash that may be dangerous to your internal nanocircuits."

Gir nodded. "Uh huh! Uh huh!"

"You have no idea what I just said, do you?" Zim said flatly.

"Nope!"

"Stand back, lest the lightshow fry your guts!"

"That happens when I drink Pop Rocks and soda!" Gir commented.

Zim looked at him, surprised. Gir had devoluped a talent for comebacks lately, making him wonder if Gir's mind was starting to evolve...no, grow like a living creature's would. He'd always suspected Gir had more in common with a lifeform than a machine.

He picked up one of the bolts, holding it expirimentally above one of the slots. The air between bolt and slot shimmered and vibrated, and Zim felt like he was holding a piece of iron right in front of a giant magnet.

He pushed it into the slot.

The bolt rotated, the lights on it changing to a bright blue. A rounded light on top of the pedastal turned blue, and it suddenly rotated extremely quickly, electricity flaring out from it and sparking blindingly.

It stopped almost too fast to completely register it, and the light went back to it's usual red.

Zim put the second bolt in.

It spun fast again, but in a more prolonged manner; it didn't spit electricity out but made a loud humming sound. The light blinked again momentarily.

"That was it?" Zim said disappointedly. "I was expecting more of a light show." He tapped the third bolt in.

It spun incredibly fast, shedding random flares of electricity with such abandon he jumped back to the perimeter of the pleateau; the electricity stored within i poured out of it and circled around it, suddenly shooting upwards in a concentrated bolt. It suddenly dropped down again, zapping through the power supply thing and spreading throughout the complex, evident by the lights brightning by a painful intensity until the lightbulbs exploded. A hologram appeared over it, saying Power charge complete. Insert Binding Band. The pyramid thing slowed to a stop, a final spark of electricity popping up around it like a coup de grace.

"Binding band?" Zim repeated. He rummuged around in his Pak for something, pulling out the odd bracelet from before. Examining it briefly, he placed on the four-sided indentation at the top; the walls of the basement turned bright green momentarily, than it faded away, leaving the walls looking free of cracks and other imperfections, leaving the portal generator stronger. The pedastal sank into the ground, leaving only the round disc-light at the top exposed. The hologram changed to an emotigram of a grinning smiley face with a floating thumbs-up hand. Operations Complete! it boasted.

"That was it?" Zim said disbelivingly. "Booooring! I was expecting something a little more dramatic that that!"

"Awwwww!" Gir said sympathetically, patting Zim on the leg, since that was about as high as he could reach.

Zim's rebuttal was interrupted by another hologram popping up, replacing the stupidly cheerful one; it was a little talking emotigram that resembled Dib's head, albeit considerably simplified; it looked like geometric shapes with a bare minimum of complex design. For some reason, it also seemed cheerful, with little upside down brown v's for eyes.

"Hi!" it said in a digitized version of Dib's voice. "If you're hearing this, then you've completed the first stage of the power-up process! Well, that's just super!"

"That...doesn't sound like Dib." Zim said slowly, "Em hem!" Gir added in agreement.

It paused, reverted to Dib's tone of voice. "Wait, would I actually say that?" it twitched spazmodically, the message taking place again and reasserted control. "Well, without anymore power-uppin' to do, this room will soon cease to exist. I hope you a remote control robot to do all the work; if not, you'll be crushed into a ball in the next fifteen seconds. Here's hoping you die before one of your ribs pierces your lungs! Ta!"

"Oh, that's just not right!" Zim yelled. "Yay! We're doomed!" "No, Gir, that's bad." "Oh. Yay!"

The emotigram spazzed again, retaining Dib's usual voice. "Now I know I wouldn't say that. And-hey!" the emotigram shut off to an immense rumbling from deep within.

"Gir." Zim said.

"Yeeeah?"

"What do you say that we run for our lives?"

"Uuuuuuuuuum...okie-dokie!"

"I concur. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Zim jumped over the fence, clearing it moments before it folded away.

"WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Gir followed his master down.

"Gir! Fly us out of here!"

"Okay!" Zim gave a huge sigh of relief that Gir was going to work with him for a change. "Right after I do this!" He started dancing a little shuffle dance, saying "Doo, doo doo doo doo!" to establish rhythm.

"Gir!" Zim yelled. "Zee-zee-Alpha-plural-Zee-nine!"

Gir's eyes, shoulders, chest panel and ball thing flashed red as he saluted. "Sir!"

"Get us OUT OF HERE! NOW!"

"Yes, sir!" He grabbed Zim's forearm and jetted off as the plateau sank into the ground and the liquid drained away.

They soaring into the air, Gir taking a moment to decide where to fly, and moved just as the wall slammed behind them.

Gir performed a series of aerial acrobatics, ducking and weaving inbetween the pillars and blocks that appeared as the rooms sealed into itself.

Gir cleared the last(techniqually first)plateau and ducked into the entrance as the walls slid into place.

Gir deactivated his jets and threw Zim at the ladder as it folded away and he crashed into it. The room compacted and started shooting upwards; as Duty Mode Gir looked worried, Zim grabbed him, held him close as Gir reverted to normal and the both of them squatted.

The swiftly ascending platform stopped with a ding at the opening in the pipe. Zim stepped out and dropped Gir and fell on his posterior, starting to hyperventilate.

Gir looked at Zim and said, "Awwwwww."

Zim looked at Gir. "That was not a hug."

"Yeah it waaaas!"

"No, it was not a hug! I was saving your life!"

"It was too a hug! You like me!"

"You promised to never speak of our personal relationship in public!"

"Someone needs a hug!" The robot jumped onto Zim's head, tightly hugging it.

Zim put up with it for about five minutes. "Gir. I know someone who's asking for the overide code again."

"Who!" Gir yelled, squeezing Zim's face. "Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! Wait. I don't wanna! It makes me feel DIRTY! DIRTY LIKE SOAP!"

"Well, if someone could have just done what I asked them to-"

"I was gettin' to it!"

"In case you forgot, WE WERE ABOUT TO GET KILLED!"

"Aaaaaaaand?"

"Aaaaaaaand I wouldn't have to use the override code if you could just grasp the concept of your own mortality!"

"Does it come with fries and a sixty-four ounce?"

"You see what I have to live with?" Zim shrieked at the heavens. The clouds above him changed into words in his native Irken, reading We apologize for the inconvience. Even when it's funny. Which this is.

"Welcome to my world," a nearby squid grumbled.

Zim facefaulted. "DOES EVERYONE HAVE TO BE PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT I'M DOING?" he screamed before pushing Squidward back into the water.

"It's not like there's anything else on," Sandy the squirrel said, sitting on the bridge post and eating a bag of popcorn. For some reason, she also had a camcorder.

Zim glared at the world. "And why was the basement lethal?" he wondered aloud.

A green single-celled organism fondling a large wallet wandered past. "Best assination attempt ever! Talk about a great assignment!"

Zim pulled out a laser gun and shot him. "OW!" He ran by and took the wallet. "HEY!" Zim threw the wallet at him. "Thank you. HEY! I had money in here!" Zim threw an eight-hundred pound chariot wheel at him. "...Not the kind from Booga-booga."

"Are you sure that's ethical?"

Zim looked up from his pilfered money to see Dib looking at him suspiciously.

"Hey, the money is mine!"

"How do you figure that?"

"Simple! Plankton got money to end my life, so this money belongs to me! It's my life!"

Dib raised an eyebrow. "Uh...huh. Still doesn't make it ethical."

Zim snorted.

Dib rolled his eyes, sighed, and walked away as his device sank into the ground up to the spires, construction completed. "You better hurry up, everyone's waiting."

"Uh-huh." Zim said nonchalantly.

He became aware of someone looking up at him. He lowered the money to see Gir looking up at him expectantly.

"What?"

Gir said nothing and continued staring.

"Hey, it's my money! He tried to kill me for it, so it's mine!"

Gir kept staring.

"Uh, uh, uh, stoppit!"

Gir kept staring.

"Fine! I'll doing something nice with it! Happy now?"

Gir nodded and walked away, grinning happily. Zim put it in his Pak moments before he was nearly trampled by a huge rush of people running up to the device. "Huh? Oh yeah!"

Zim ran up through the crowd, muttering various apologies and excuses, making his way to the front. He saw Dib in front of the crowd, playing up his role as leader and grandstander. He's really enjoying this, Zim thought, feeling a little pity for the human. Minimoose floated out of nowhere and landed on Zim's head. Zim made no objection to this, making Gir go "Awwwww!"

"Okay, everyone!" Dib yelled through a megaphone. "It'll all begin in-four!"

"Three!" Everyone in the crowd joined in. It was pretty impressive, seeing all those different people doing one thing.

"Two!" The crowd's yell increased to a roar, frightening off a prehistoric sea reptile.

The ground shoke on the island, everyone turning around to look. A dessicated human corpse pulled his way out of the ground and lurched over to them.

It shook it's decaying fist angrily. "Do you freakin' mind! Some of us are trying to rest in eternal sleep down here!"

"Sorry!" Almost everyone said. "I'm not!" said an obnoxius chihuhua named Ren.

Dib, Zim and everyone else looked at him. "Does anyone care what this guy is saying?" A kid in a pink hat said through a green megaphone that had a face no one seemed to notice. "NO!" everyone yelled. "Down with rudeness! Up with...Hey, Timmy," Timmy Turner's megaphone yelled. "Can you give me a polite cheer?" "Um, up with customary politeness?" "Hey! You know the charter rules! Don't do anything remotely intelligent!" "What charter?" Timmy's faerie godmother interrupted. "The one on this neat picture?" he said, holding up an X-Ray of his skull, showing a cobwebby space with a sign saying This Space For Rent. "You moron." "Yeah, I love you too!"

The zombie wandered back into his grave, grumbling about respect and the young, young, young people you got today.

"A-HEM." Dib said.

"Oh, right." Everyone else said.

"What number were we on?" a kid from Skool said.

"I think it was eight." said a Martian.

"No, three!" yelled an Irken.

Meanwhile, the two faeries argued. "And that's why I shoot out of a cannon without a helmet!" Cosmo declared proudly "Moron!" Wanda yelled. "And I love you! Again! How many declarations of love do you need before you stop! What do you need, a ceremony where we exchange vows and promise to never love anyone else!" "We already did a thousand years ago!" "We did? And no one told me? How long have I had that hanging over my head? What other secrets are you hiding, huh? Huh!" Wanda sighed. "See? That's why I love you." Cosmo cringed, mistaking what she said as the opposite. "How can you say something like that! I don't wanna go back to marriage consuling!" "How many times am I going to have to say this! When a woman says something, it doesn't mean the opposite!" "See? You just proved yourself wrong! You said that when a woman says something, it doesn't the opposite, so it means the opposite! But..wait.."

"Yeah? Yeah?" Wanda said with baited breath.

The green-haired faerie grimaced as if he was passing a shruiken through his digestive tract. A vauge creaking came from the vicinity of his head.

He started to sweat with effort, making an eye-popping, teeth-creaking expression.

"It..means.."

"Yeah?"

The expression stopped. "Supernatural tennis season starts soon! Go Pooka U.!" Wanda slapped her head.

"Hey, guys!" Timmy yelled at them quietly. "Over here." They flew to him.

"Look," Dib yelled, unaware that he was missing an argument he would have given his eyeteeth to use on Mysterious Mysteries. "We were on two! It's not that hard!"

"Oh, okay." "Sounds right." "Sure, that works." "Hey, he's got the remote." "I'M COVERED IN TOOTHPASTE! TAKE ME TO THE TEETH!"

Ignoring that slightly insane outburst from the end results of the faerie marital arguement, everyone took a deep breath.

"Two..."

"ONE!"

"Happy New Year!" Tucker Foley yelled. Everyone stared at him. "What? See, Danny? This is why I hate coming in late."

"It's your own fault for stopping at the Krusty Krab, which you can't fit in with your submarine!"

"How I'm supposed to breath underwater? Not all of us can turn intangible."

"Is that why you broke the stupid thing?" a mildly gothic looking girl with black hair done in a front curling ponytail said dryly.

"Aw, you can afford it." She punched him in the shoulder. "Ow!"

"Enough distractions." Dib pushed the single button on his remote.

A deep rumble echoed from within the edifice, getting everyone's attention; all commotion ceased, everyone looking up at the machine.

Though the Portal Generator didn't appear to move at all, mysterious noises of operation and activation came up from within it, hidden from sight. Everyone stared in rapt fascination, waiting the promised big flashy moment.

The noises grew in intensity and variety, until the few mummurs and whispers around were eclipsed by the sound. Vast rumbles matched that of the expectatations of those there.

Zim looked curiously at the machine. He had no idea what was going to happen, not being privy to the operations of it. He suspected it was probably going to involve some kind of portal being generated, but aside from that, he didn't have anything in the way of an idea.

Minimoose sprouted a cam-corder to record this momentus occasion. Gir was more or less completely oblivious to what was going on and was chasing a rubber moose at the end of a pole thing extending from his head, laughing to himself.

The rumbles increased until they might seem to crack the islet in two when they suddenly ceased with a resounding sound that sounded like an electrical snap. Something incredibly dramatic, cool and mind-scramblingly visual in nature completely failed to occur.

Everyone stared at the Portal Generator wordlessly, the silence slightly intimidating. A seagull started to cry, then quickly hushed out of embarrasment. A teenager small in stature, with blue arrows tattooed onto his face, wearing some kind of orange robe, attempted to break the uncomfortable silence by make a minitornado in his palm. Several people standing next to him glared at him and Ren kicked him in the chin; given his small stature, the dog didn't particularily injure the boy but the Airbender got the hint; the tornado disappeared as another stronger blast of wind blew the dog into the sea.

Everyone stared at the building for a few moments. Nothing happened.

Dib smirked at those watching, calmly stepping off the platform and assimilating into the crowd flawlessly; he'd gotten good at blending into the crowd. Some people started to mutter mutinously.

The slightly rusty gears in Zim's head started to turn furiously; he knew Dib well, and he knew that the amateur cryptozoologist was up to something. Granted, Dib's sense of drama stunk like the corpse of a Lepidopterran, but he thought something was up. Dib, after all, always kept his promises.

The possibly literal gears in Minimoose's head quietly spun slowly; he floated onto Dib's head, resting there comfortably to get a vantage point. Apparently realizing something, the robot(or whatever the heck Minimoose is)floated off Dib's head and onto Jimmy Neutron's head.

Norbert the Beaver looked up, noticing the toylike automation. "Hey, Jim," he said casually, as was his way. "You realize that weird alien's robot's on your head?"

Jimmy looked up frantically, unable to see over his ridiculous pompadour; he had bad, bad memories of the last time Gir got on his head. It took a month of psychotherapy to cure his phobia of explosive chocolate rabbits, and even now the nightmares kept coming...

"The other robot," Norbert clarified, seeing the boy genius's distress.

"Oh," Jimmy said, looking relieved. Than confused. "Why is Minimoose on my head?"

Minimoose squeaked.

"Ah." Than to Norbert, "What did he just say?"

The surfer-styled beaver shrugged. He didn't speak Squeaken.

"Maybe to get a better vantage point," Daggert said snidely.

Minimoose squeaked in affirmation.

"Hey!"

The extremely rusty monkey in Gir's head that was a metaphor for his mind weakly tried to clap it's cymbals together. It's arms fell off, and after a moment, the rest of it collapsed into ruin. Gir stuck his toungue out and started jumping around on his head until he bounced by Zim and the Irken grabbed the robot's leg. Thinking it was some kind of game, Gir started spinning his head slowly, making a low-key chugging sound.

Gir suddenly stopped, and pointed ahead. "Master, d'you hear bees?"

Zim frowned. "Bees? What bees? I hear no be-"

He was interrupted when an humming sound cracked again from the Generator like a whip cracking, several panels along the sides of the base of the machine itself burst into a bright blue radiance. Deep within the machine, connectors clicked in to place as they had been doing when everyone was standing around waiting for something interesting to happen, but with greater frequency. Everyone heard a loud snap, and the panels on the spires glowed an intensely bright blue, and started spinning slowly.

"Told you," Dib told Jimmy smugly. The self-proclaimed boy genius grumbled, handing Dib a tightly wound ball of money.

Electricity streamed around the machine's spires as the air began to vibrate around it, subtlely distorting the area within the machine. The spires slowed down, stopping completely. The machine lowered, becoming smaller in height as the various pipes and other structures retreated into it, and the upper part of the spires raised themselves slightly, pointing at an angle. The lower halves of them retreated into the machine, locking into place as the conical tips of the spires glowed the same blue as everything else. It stopped shrinking as it's top reached ground level.

Swirls of energy suddenly crackled around the glowing cones, increasing in intensity as the raised part of the Generator's platform sank to the ground, creating a completely flat surface.

The swirls of energy shot out in bright blue streams that were the wrong color for electricity; this was too bright for electricity, and there was yellow and orange spread through it, flashing off like solar flares. The four beams in question met each other in the precise center, melding together in a big swirling ball. There was a small and steady humming coming from the machine.

"Ooh! Aah!" People said. Those who said that did so in such a horribly cliche that their names shall not be spoken. Artistic integrity and all that.

The big ball of energy fluctated as the beams feeding it increased in size and power, and those who were close enough to it saw things with in the prismatic sphere; they sped by too quickly to be identified clearly, but to say that they saw a small slice of all existence was only a bit of an exaggeration.

It was a beautifully mind-twitching display. Even the consistently jaded those there, such as Gaz, felt a faint glimmer of wonder and awe at everything there. It was everything, and the fact that their minds were incapable of comprehending it all only added to it's allure. Dib felt a moment of wonder that he had been able to form this machine in his mind, barely able to understand what he was now looking at.

No one saw the flash of darkness inbetween the views of all those different worlds.

Dib looked up and frowned inwardly. Something seemed...off-hand. Some stray trivia flittered at the edge of his mental pheriphery, but he forget his netapult.

He looked at the portal-ball, looking for anything out of place. Of course, having never seen this kind of thing before he had no idea what to expect, so he saw nothing odd. Except for the vortex of swirling Creation, that is. He gave it up, as staring at all of creation too intently causes nausua.

Electrical current moved down through tubing on the interiors of the spires, flowing to the octagonal part in the center. The octagon glowed the same radiant color as the ball, with less special effects.

The ball above suddenly lost it's cohesion and flowed downwards to the octagon as the four spires moved around slowly, hooking together and forming two spires that resembled an incomplete arch. The ball hit the platform, creating a prismatic waterfall like thing. The two spires started rotating quickly, causing the portal to curve around itself, creating the impression of a door.

And then the reletively quiet humming abruptly stopped, replaced by a loud electrical snap accompined by the bluish electrical current faded away.

The spinning spires suddenly stopped completely stopped, and the portal suddenly froze. For about five and a half seconds.

Then it expanded, shifting violently and completely unwound, ripping itself apart and exploding outwards in a huge shockwave.

At the buzzing crack moments ago, everyone had begun to feel uneasy, and when it reacted to the sudden lack of sufficiant power, they dispersed and scattered in a big screaming mob.

No one got very far; for one thing, everyone kept tripping over everyone else, some people tried to help those who'd fallen up, thus causing fleeing jerks to try and push others out of the way. It was considerably more organized than a typical mob scene, espicially since there were so many people of good quality present.

It was a moot issue, seeing as they were engulfed in a red-pink wave in short order.

The shockwave knocked them down, and many screamed as the dispersed portal washed over them, fluctating auras swimming into existence around them.

Zim braced himself, catching Minimoose and Gir as the two robots were haphazardly flung away, while Dib landed onto a nearby tree while Gaz simply stood where she was, seemingly unbothered by the wave.

As abruptly as it began, the wave faded, taking a few minor features of the landscape with it.

Everyone unfroze, looking around dazedly. "Are we dead?" Zim finally said to Dib.

The human shook his head. "No, I don't think so. If we were, than I think the surrondings would a bit more interesting than this."

"So what happened?" Zim asked, feeling slightly dizzy and unware of the electricity racing up between his antannae.

"How should I know?"

"It's your machine!"

"Hey, I just designed it! Neutron built it!"

"Leave me out of this!"

Gir looked at the area dreamily, vauge fantasies of surfing playing through his head. Then something clicked.

"Hey! Hey! Hey!" he yelled, jumping up and down to get their attention. "I know! I know! I know! I know! I know! I know!"

Dib and Zim stared at Gir. "Well?" Dib said after a few moments.

Gir stared blankly back at him. "Well what?"

"Well what do you know about it?"

The light of understanding brightened Gir's dim mind momentarily. "Oooooooooh! THAT! I know where you live."

"Dib slapped his forehead in fustration," Zim narrated for no apparent reason. Dib stared at him, straightening his glasses. "He meant about the machine."

"Oh." Gir said, nodding slowly. "I got nothing!"

Alien and human slumped wearily. "Why am I not surprised?" Zim grumbled.

"Waaait a minute," Dib said, straightening up. He placed a hand on his chin, tapping his cheekbone comtemplatively. Gir imitated him dispite the lack of a skeleton and produced a dull clanking sound; the robot removed his head and started playing it like a drum, his disembodied head yelling happily.

Dib frowned. Several images raced in his mind:..The portal undoing itself...the humming cracking...Gir yelling about bees...the minimum power basis in his designs...Plankton rigging the Generator to crush Zim...

He slammed a fist into an open hand decisively. "I got it! The machine must've ran below the minimum power rating, causing it to shut off. Without power to finish it, the portal dissapated in traditional dramatic fashion. Half of the power must've been eaten up by Plankton during his stupid assasination attempt, which didn't leave enough power to finish the rift."

Rift? Zim thought.

Dib continued. "And that caused the harmless shockwave. Hmmm...there's always a minimum supply of power; whenever the power gets so low that it starts tapping it, the operations automatically cease so it can recharge. But the spacial gate requires a certain amount of power to open it and keep it open, so it exploded."

Spac-Wait a minute! "Hold it!" Zim yelled. "First you called it a portal, than a rift. Now you're calling it a..a..whatever it is you called it! Which is it?"

Dib shrugged. "I wax on and off."

"So now what do we do?" Zim grunted unhappily. He was in no mood to go find more stupid power bolt thingies.

"Nothing. We go home, let it recharge and come back in the morning. It'll be full by then."

Zim made several complex and pointless calculations in his head. "So...take about fourteen hours...add a postive value equal to the number of minutes the energy charges itself...multiply it by charges approximate to local energy flows...add the imaginary numbers...add a random number to represent the possibility of an exploding star squatting in the center of it..."

"Wait a second! You're just making stuff up, aren't you?"

"...Yes."

Dib clapped his hands in conclusion. "So, we just need to let it recharge, alright?" He directed that at the crowd, who was receiving a similar speech from Jimmy Neutron, with similar interruptions.

Zim snapped his fingers and handed a red flag to Dib. "What's this for?" the boy asked in confusion.

Zim grinned. "So it can charge!" Gir did a drumroll punctuating the Irken's remark.

Dib grimaced. "Ack. Puns." Gaz commented.

"What! You don't like wordplay?"

"That wasn't wordplay." Dib said. "That was terrible." Gir did another drumroll.

"Stop that!" Zim pulled Gir's head out of the robot's hands and stuck it back on his neck. "You're starting to make me wish I'd taken up postmodern art appreciation class."

Zim was in a small classroom with a bunch of other people; all of them were wearing black clothes and little weird hats. For some reason, the room was dark.

The teacher clapped his hand, causing the lights to turn on. "Now then," he said in the sort of voice that makes people want to turn you inside out, "we turn to the twentieth piece in the Hemosasus collection." He pulled the covering off a painting that seemed to consist entirely of random splotches of dark color that suggested cancerous tumors. It also suggested to the viewer's stomachs that it was time to void themselves.

Zim shuddered. "Okay, maybe not."

Dib raised an eyebrow. "What the heck was that?"

"What are you, an idiot? That was a mental clip that showed what being in a postmodern art class would be like."

"Wait. If that was a flashback in your mind, why did we see it!"

"One, you're wearing some kind of a telepathic headband thing," Zim said, pointing at everyone in turn. "Two, Gir has so little mind he shares the ones of people around him(I guess), and Gaz? I don't want to know. She scares me."

They looked at the creepy girl in question; a storm cloud gathered above her, darkening the sky and throwing lightning bolts haphazardly.

Dib and Zim backed away from the scary sister, while Gir, having no concept of mortality, hugged her head.

One of her perpetually squinty eyes opened, showing a dark brown eye glaring at the world with the intensity of a targeting laser.

Luckily for the witless robot, certain doom for him was forestalled by the Last Airbender popping up from the beach, possibly literally.

"Hey, everybody's leaving!" Aang yelled at them, standing atop a pillar of sand that hadn't been there before; it was shifting slightly, small whirls of it's components drifting around it. Interested by this, Gir dropped off Gaz's head, dancing around it in a kind of swing dance. "Aren't you coming?"

"Not yet/squeak," Gaz, Zim, Minimoose and Dib said all at once. They looked at each other, surprised.

Aang shrugged cheerfully. "See you later!" The sand pillar contracted and launched him away as if it were a cannon as it fell apart; he landed semi-gracefully on a large white furred six-legged beast that looked vaugely like an oversized bison, with blue arrows on it's head much like the one's on Aang's head. It rose into the air without any apparent means of transport and flew off, a small gust of wind stirring up the sand it had been standing on.

Gaz looked up from her Game Slave Supreme, looking at the mystical flying beast. "Is it me," she said, "or have our lives gotten weirder since that whole stupid space thing?"

"Nah," said the paranormal investigator who owed his existence to being the end result of a failed expirament and spent his days as a junior operative for a super-secret society that sounded like a Ben Stein commercial.

"Not that I've noticed," added the tan green reformed alien invader who was currently occupied with keeping his insanely stupid and stupidly insane robot from eating the sand while his miniture moose sidekick floated around and squeaked a lot.

She mumbled something inchoherent, somehow jumping onto the rickety bridge's robe and crossing it while paying complete attention to her game, jumped down and walked across the beach and heading into the semi-tropical jungles of the Destiny Isle Zim had claimed as his personal nation for about five and a half hours before he got bored a year and a half ago. For some reason, a breeze stirred the sand behind her as if for dramatic effect.

Zim looked at Dib. "I have the distinct feeling I was just zinged several times."

Dib raised an eyebrow. "'Zinged'? Where do you come up with this stuff?"

"This from the guy who coined the expression 'things he do'?"

Dib clapped sarcastically. "That's why you're better off sticking to irony and letting the puns die in peace." He walked away from Zim and started strolling across the bridge when an unusually heavy crosswind blew the bridge apart, throwing him off into the ocean where a riptide carried him around the island, leaving him on a piece of driftwood and staring uncomprehendingly.

Zim wasn't really paying attention to that spectacle and was watching Gir make sandcastles before reenacting old and bad Kojera movie scenes. By the time he looked up, he saw Dib floating on a plank around the island, leaving him to wonder if he'd just missed something.

He extended his spider-legs, delicately stepping over the gap between the machine's islet and the main island. Noticing his master's sudden absence, Gir flew after him as a new bridge slid out from an unseen panel.

Gir landed on Zim's shoulder. The Irken started to walk back to his ship, reconsidered it, and decided to stay here for a while. He walked off into the forest, intent on finding one of the old ruins. Maybe there was some ancient sculpture he could take as a trophy or something. He paused, looking at the people walking back to their ships.

"Gir! Attack the Ren!"

"Whyyyyyyy?" Gir drawled annoyingly.

"Because his head has a center of haggis!"

"HAGGGIS!" The robot flew off his shoulder as Zim closed his eyes and grinned at the ensuing yelps of pain. He pulled out his digital recorder as to record the event for posterity.

A few minutes later, Gir left the bruised form of the obnoxious chihuahua behind, flying back to Zim as the cackling Irken went into the jungle as he'd planned.

Hours later...

On another smaller islet platform, Dib, Gaz, Gir, Minimoose and Zim watched the fading sunset.

It was smaller than the machine's one, being merely a mostly sunken small peninsula. A crooked tree grew near the edge, providing a seat for Dib and Minimoose. The islet itself had been reinforced with wooden barricades, which had somehow survived years since being placed up by their original builders, whoever they were.

Sometimes, Zim thought this might've been the upper most tower of a primitive fortress. After all, the rest of the various islands on this archepelago seemed to be the tops of mountains that had sunk, so it wasn't that far-fetched.

Zim sat under the tree, residing half in the shade while feeling the comforting heat of the retreating sun. Gir sat on his head, and Zim allowed him to stay there for reasons only the Irken knew. Dib reclined along the tree's crooked trunk, taking advantage of the naturally formed seat while Minimoose floated near him, resting on the tree's 'top'. Gaz sat cross-legged on the edge of it, near the barricades.

They had sat there for a while now, engaging in idle chatter, as was their way. Somehow, the subject had come to one of a rather existential nature.

Dib, being the most philosophical of them, spearheaded the conversation. "If you think about, it doesn't make much sense. If the Portal Generator works, it proves that there are other worlds out there. And if there are, why did we end up on this one of all possible worlds?"

Zim, being who he was, shrugged. "If there are other worlds out there(besides the one we know, that is), than it stands to reason that there is a reason we don't see, a chain of casuality we can't find the anchor to. Besides, does it really matter?"

Dib snorted. "Of course it matters! Think how different it would have been for all of us; Zim might have been born into a society that integrates human and alien paradigms, me and Gaz would have been born with a semi-decent parent-"Gaz grunted at this, but said nothing else,"-and that's just us."

Minimoose squeaked once. Gir jumped off Zim's head and started rolling around in the sand.

"You've got a point," Zim noted. "What about Minimoose and Gir?" he directed at Dib.

Dib thought about it. "I don't know. The reasons for building them would be massively different, if they were ever built at all." Gir, totally unaware that his existence or potential lack there of was being discussed, scooped up sand to built a sand castle. Of course, it wouldn't clump together without getting wet, but he didn't care at all.

"And that's just the world we know." Gaz said. "Technically speaking, any world we could think of probably exists somewhere out there."

"If they're there." Zim pointed out. A tentaclelike apparatus shot out of his Pak and snagged a fruit from the tree's branch. He started eating it, deciding that the pollution that plauged the city he'd originally ended up on probably wouldn't effect an island all the way over here. He took a bite into the fruit, which due to either some turn in evolution or the whim of a Creator(or quite possibly both)reason was shaped like a star; it tasted like a sweet and juicy orange.

"Yeah," Dib said, looking past the sunset and towards the infinite sky. Infinity on it's own was boring, as the mind tended to disregard things it couldn't comprehend, either as a self-defense mechanism or just because mankind is stupid. He considered all that was.

"And think of this: our world is only a small fragment of a greater world." Dib's fingernail scraped across the bark, making Zim flinch; the Irken hated noises like that. "One part of something we care barely even imagine."

The purple haired girl looked at her brother, perpetually squinty eyes raising a bit. "You've been thinking about this a lot." It was a statement, not a question.

Zim looked up at the boy. "You've kept your mind off supernormal matters for more than six minutes? This is serious."

"Almost unnatural," Gaz said.

"Squeak!"

"I like your hat!" Gir added, trying to get in the conversation in his own way.

Dib cracked a wry smile. "Knock it off!"

They all laughed, in their own ways: Zim roared maniacally, Gaz gave a rare smirk, Gir giggled while rocking up and down, clutching his feet, and Minimoose squeaked rapidly, his sounds making less inflection then usual.

They had changed since the days in which Zim and Dib were in a daily struggle to make the other fail miserably: Zim was still crazy, but in a good way, with a notable lack of intentional evil. Dib had become somewhat more rational, Gaz had started to come out of her shell somehow, and it was difficult to discern Gir and Minimoose's changes. Dib and Zim's rivalry had evolved into a friendship, though one that retained it's competetiveness. Neither of them were willing to give ground to the other in this matter, putting the truth in the old adage the more things change, the more they stay the same.

After a moment, the laughter died down, at least for Zim and his sidekicks; after all, they were the only ones who were really laughing. They leaned back, relaxing and taking in the sights.

"You know," Gaz said, "It doesn't matter what anyone does. This place never really changes."

"Yeah," Zim agreed. He looked out towards the east, at the mainland. "Too bad for us," he said with the mark of a frown begining to crest his face.

Dib thought of everything they went through almost on a daily basis and smiled, letting his arm dangle below the tree loosely. "Trust me on this. By noon tomorrow, everything's going to be different."

What passed for content on Gaz's face faded suddenly, replaced by her nearly permanent frown. "What makes you say that?" she said sharply to Dib.

Dib sat up, taking note of that look on Gaz's face. Her moods were difficult to understand, ranging from the reason several easily frightened and fundamentalistic neighbors believed her to be the walking Wrath of God, to the more calm and restrained one she had been in. He knew his sister's mood pretty well, if not the actual sister, so he knew to tread carefully without backing away, oh, about eight-hundred or so meters.

"Just a feeling I have."

Gaz frown deepened. She wondered if Dib was sharing her feelings about the Portal Generator, than discounted the thought; her feeling was vaugely pessimistic, while Dib sounded almost gleeful. Then again, she thought, he probably wouldn't consider it a big loss if Nicktown was wiped from the face of the planet.

She knew her brother was nuts. So was his best friend. Exactly what kind of crazy that was seemed to change on an almost daily basis.

They were worlds apart. She knew that and it didn't bother her. Where he threw himself into paranormal persuits, she prefered the electronically rendered world of video games. They both liked black, but where he liked blue, she prefered purple in varying shades. Where he had his hair in spikes, she had hers in hooks(a psychologist might well conclude that that showed the difference in their defensive personality shells). The biggest issue of all was their dad. Between Membrane and Dib was an almost unbreachable gulf, traversed only occasionally by a shared interest in science fiction and a talent for invention. Gaz and her father shared a marginally better relationship, ameliorated by the fact that being the younger sibling and a girl at that, he didn't see her as a work-in-progress as he did Dib. Most of her emotional life went into keeping her relationship with her father alive, much like a withering garden, which was why Gaz was always so determined to spend time with him whenever possible. She vaugely understood Dib's blaise attitude towards him, if not why. But then, she wasn't a people person. Gaz's perview was the operation of things. She understood how things worked, not people.

Neither sibling knew quite why Membrane had raised them as his children, which they technically were. They were the results of a failed expiriment, not a relationship with a wife or significant other. The only mother they had was a random laboratory. Membrane was annoyingly practical, and admittingly incompetent at raising children, almost never remembering their names half the time and speaking to them in an oddly formal way. Nonetheless, he treated them as his own children and not random freaks of science gone amok who owed their lineage to his DNA and little else.

Gaz accepted this with her usual detachment towards most things; Dib had not attained her grasp of equimity and had not come to terms with it. She suspected that might be at the core of their problems, besides the fact that obsessive-compulsion was probably at the root of their problems.

Zim, for his part, was only having serious thought in his particular brand of seriousness. He was using his forefinger to draw out complicated equations in the sand to prove the notion in a movie Zim saw once, where the protaganist had accidentally discovered the secret name of God in a mathamatical equation, attracting the attention of conspiracy theorists. Intriged by the notion, he'd sporadically attempted to duplicate the feat by himself in a manner; he had no interest in the name, merely the proof. His household computer refused to help on the basis that if Zim wanted to prove that, he'd ought to do it by himself the traditional way; there were certain things the computer refused to do(besides being useful)and telling him something he really should work out for himself was one of them(besides, doing something like that was just asking for trouble). The mechanical brain on Zim's back wasn't quite advanced enough to perform such a complicated equation, and Zim frequently got bored with it halfway, anyway.

Case in point: Zim's equation to prove the Truth Behind All Truths(as he'd put in unconscious poetry)had gone off-track and degenerated into a comic strip drawing of himself as a cat-alien blowing up Philadelphia with a super-bazooka formed from a banana-peel and a hermit crab shell Zim found lying around. Gir had noticed his master's 'art' and made his own contribution to it: a giant version of himself smashing buildings.

Zim's train of thought started to board at the same station where his computer had gotten it's reasons for not helping Zim, and he decided that trying to prove a conspiracy theory-type book right was stupid.

He brushed the equation away with the palm of his hand and immediately began drawing a complicated schematic of how to rig the city electrical system to spawn living electric currents to literally shock the living hell out of burglars and make them model citizens. At least, after they were properly prepared and infested with the appropiate nanontechnology.

Gir took out an elaborate masterpiece of Zim and drew exaggerated eyebrows, sideburns, a Fu Manchu mustache and a oversized clown wig on him with a red crayon in a childish scrawl. Keef had more where that came from.

Minimoose shook his head sadly at the antics of his creator and 'brother'.

A gopher popped out of a knothole in the tree. "Generalissimo Magnifico Ungulta Minimoose-apologies for cutting the introduction short-, the Cabaret needs your counsel as Supreme Ruler of the wor-"

Minimoose waved his feet-nubs frantically, desperatately trying to shush the gopher.

The rodent got the hint and saluted. "Another time then." He retreated into the knothole, completely unobserved by the others present.

"Squeek." It wasn't easy ruling the world. Zim knew that; that's why he had the intention of leaving it in charge of robots when he was plotting to conquer it. Minimoose even suspected he had automaphobia; fear of rulership.

"What was that, Minimoose?" Zim said idlely, not really paying attention to what was going on.

"Squeak squeak squeeeek."

"Oh. Why would you have Tourette's Syndrome? I didn't program you for that."

"Squeak."

"Really? Good thing I have my laboratory functional again! First thing we do when we get home is...fix you." Zim laughed in a low mad voice.

The miniture moose robot squeaked in a nearly inadible voice.

Zim laughed evilly as Dib looked up. The sun had almost faded from view entirely. Strange how a lot could happen in so little time.

"I'm going home. You guys coming?"

"Sure, why not, squeak, I gonna eat your feet-meats!" came the reply in varying tones, voices, and mental stability.

They all got off where they were, walking to the ships that were parked by a tree. In theory; the Voot Cruiser was propping up the Dibship, halfway covered in dirt and sand with a trench following it a few feet past a tree that had been broken in half.

Draw your own conclusions.

Zim had opened the Voot's windshield-slash-cockpit door when Dib yelled at him from behind. "Hey ZIM!"

"What?" The Irken said warily.

"'Lest I forget, I got that thing you commisioned from the metalworkers a few weeks ago. Apparently, they didn't know where you lived, so they sent it to me. Catch." He threw a small metallic something at Zim.

Zim, with reflexes honed by being both an Irken soldier and a research scientist specializing in Madness, caught it easily. Of course, with Dib's throwing arm, that didn't mean much.

Zim held the something in his fist, a fine chain protruding from it. He gently unwound it from his hand, holding the loop of the chain in one hand as he admired it.

Dib observed it with interest. Since he'd recieved it by accident, he wondered what it meant. After all, jewlery of a sort wasn't exactly Zim's style.

The chain it was attached to wasn't very long, just long enough to wrap around Zim's neck, small and functional, with a small trinket attached to it resembling the modified Irken insignia he had taken for his own. Zim slipped it over his neck, displaying it proudly over his shirt.

"What's it mean?" Dib said, who knew his friend fairly well.

"A reminder." Zim explained, explaining nothing. Zim picked up his sidekicks and deposited them unceremoniously into the cockpit, pausing to consider the trinket.

It was meaningful in a specific way. The crownlike part symbolized the ruler. The other part of it represented the soul; he was determined to never repeat the mistakes of the past, to never be so foolish again. The trinket was a reminder of who he was now; he'd once dreamed of conquering all in the universe. Now he was content with simply ruling the kingdom no dark desire would claim again: his own sacred soul. Never again would he be willing to kill out of vain ambition. He had better plans now, more upright ones. And he planned to keep them.

Besides, he thought, it looked cool.

Dib raised his hand in an odd gesture that resembled the surfer shaka. He knew the shaka represented a wealth of things, all benevolent, so he took it as that.

"Here's to destiny," Dib said, walking to his ship as Gaz starting rapping on the window impatiently.

"...Okaay," Zim said, feeling throughly confused.

He climbed into the ship; a few moments later, both ships took off, heading for their respective homes. Gir stuck his head out the window before his caretaker pulled him back in, wondering when the Voot Cruiser had a window put in.

"Hey kid. Call it an uneducated guess but-"

"Don't say it!"

"He's right. We are definitely-"

"I said don't say it!"

"We're lost." the skull and tiger said together.

The kid grumbled, but didn't say anything. "We are not lost. We just need to...re-orient ourselves in the appropiate direction."

Hobbes looked at Morte. "We're even more lost then we thought."

"I told you before, I don't get lost! As a technomancer, alchemist and general mystic, I have an innate sense of direction."

"'Yukon.'"

Though that word made no sense to Morte, it would have made Calvin's hackles rise if he had any. "You promised to never bring that up!"

"And you promised to never let my bathing habits become public knowledge! Fairs fair."

"A lot happens in a interview and I ran out of idle chit-chat! And they thought the dry-cleaning thing was funny."

"See how funny it is when you have to put conditioner and shampoo in a washing cycle."

"Entertaining as this is, shouldn't you fellas watch out for that!"

The Gummi Ship violently swerved out of the way of an immense mile-long beast; it had a grumpy draconian face, with several teeth jutting out like a crocodile's, serrated fins for ears and eyes that might belong to an organic binocular. It's actual body resembled that of a white-gray blimp, with small vestigial feet and wings. A flame ignited somewhere under it's tail and it flew off fairly quickly.

"You see!" Hobbes yelled, pointing at the creature as it disappeared. "I'd swear that's the fith time we've seen that space dragon! We are so lost we keep running into a fire-farting thing that looks like the love child of Fafnir and the Hindenburg!"

"That can't be fire," Calvin said in an absurdly reasonable voice. "There's no oxygen here to combust."

Hobbes threw his hands up in frustration. "Maybe it's emitting oxygen or something, I don't know or care! What I care about is getting back on track!"

Morte grinned. Of course, he was a skull so he was always grinning, but that was besides the fun. "And to think I was going to pretend to be a stage prop. Lothar'd bust a gut trying to see all this stuff.

Oblivious to the skull's observations, Calvin and Hobbes continued arguing. "You couldn't pilot if your life depended on it!"

"Speaking of which-"

"We are not going to die!"

"We have no idea where we're going, we nearly crashed into a few stars twice, and we have no real food! What makes you think we're not!"

"...Mutinator!"

"Blithering nitwit!"

"Whiner!"

"Arrogant brat!"

"Smelly furball!"

"Selfish egotist!"

"Walking rug!"

"Human!"

"...Casanova!"

"'Casanova'?" said Hobbes, looking utterly bewildered.

Calvin's eyes darted from side to side. "I had to think of something real quick or I'd mess up our group dynamic."

"What group dynamic? This is 'you and me and him makes three', not some rock group or weird team in some story. There aren't enough of us to qualify as a group."

"Says you. Where were we?"

"Stage three."

"Right. Pointless arguing followed by rule flaunting." Calvin pulled out a large guidebook out of a glove compartment in the control panel that had G.R.O.S.S written on it in big shiny letters. "According to our General Rules Of Sound actionS charter , the primary technician has piloting rights!"

"But you're not this ships technician. Marcus and Jason are."

"THAT DOES IT!" Calvin launched off his seat and into Hobbes; the two of them rolled around the ship, leaving Morte to steer it.

The ship wobbily flew into the deeper parts of space, argumentive and senseless sounds coming from it.

I hope that flowed better than the Dreamer; certainly took me less time to write, that's for sure.

As a challenge, try to note all the hidden references to other things, excluding characters. Let's see how deeply you can delve into my mind without going as mad as me this side of the autistic spectrum!

Reviews are always appreciated, but bear this in mind; I like advice and interesting observations. Glowing praise is nice and lights up my day, but seriously people: I'm trying to do stuff no one else has done yet. Help me out here!

As a final note, I leave you with HVK's Wise Words of Wisdom.

Those who claim words can never hurt clearly have never been hit in the face by a dictionary.

Okay, maybe I could do better than that.

The Path of Good is ardous and long, those who walk it bear a heavy burden. But those who walk on the Path of Evil must take care, lest they fall onto the righteous path.