Title: Gir, I Know What We're Gonna Do Today! (GIKWWGDT)
Chapter 6: Hey, Where's Gaz?
Characters: Zim, Phineas, Ferb, Candace, Dib, Isabella, Gaz, ~Fireside Girls
Word count: 1657

Author's Note: Ten points to whoever spots the Hetalia reference! This chapter is pretty much the same, but I wanted to fix that one scene where Zim has a snack break. I highly doubt Irkens would willingly share their snacks with strangers.

Zim ran his fingers through his wig in frustration. His incredibly amazing invention was a pile of smoking machinery. "Do you really think your evolved monkey brains can fix this?" the dubious Irken asked Phineas. He gestured to the UTP, which was starting to make strange clanking and hissing noises.

Phineas smiled and shrugged, "Yeah, it should be fairly easy; my brother Ferb and I built something similar to this once. And we're handy with tools." Ferb twirled a hammer to demonstrate his point.

"I really don't think you should." Zim bragged, so full of himself, that the arrival of a pair of walking, metal legs went unnoticed, "This is a very complex, sophisticated piece of machinery that I built myself, and I highly doubt — Hey, how did you do that?" Zim stared in shock at the brothers, who were perched atop a giant metal contraption with legs and a protruding magnet-shaped arm. The Irken closed his mouth before he could catch flies and quickly regained a cool, unimpressed manner. "So… what is that and how does it work? I DEMAND you explain it to me, ZIM. NOW, human worm babies!"

"It's a—"

"NO, there's no time for that!" Zim interrupted. "We must get to work immediately, so I can get back to my own universe. This one makes me sick! With your… bright… cheeriness and THE SUN! WHY IS IT SO BRIGHT?!"

Phineas glanced at Ferb, who returned his blank, confused stare. "Anyway… we should probably get started if you want to get home anytime soon," Phineas said. The brothers parked the machine in the shade of the tree and climbed down. Zim followed them to the pile of wreckage. "Do you have any blueprints?"

Zim blinked. "My robot minio— I mean… my dog must have them." Phineas sent Zim a funny look and shrugged.

"Well, we could just freestyle it," Phineas suggested. "How about it, Ferb?" The green-haired boy nodded and gave a thumbs up in response. The brothers immediately began to work on the scraps of metal, salvaging usable parts and putting aside the charred and smoking bits. Zim hesitated.

Well, these humans looked like they knew what they were doing. And Zim was all for letting them do most of the work. The Irken shrugged and pitched in by "supervising" and providing the boys with tons of snacks from their own pantry. Zim tore into a bar of Snackers; surprised at the delicious, sticky sweetness, he exclaimed in disgust. The brothers looked up. "You guys don't have chocolate bars in your universe?" Phineas asked.

Zim shook his head and wiped his snake-like tongue with the back of his gloved hand. "Nah, just Poop Candy Bars." He shuddered at the memory of the sawdusty taste. Phineas raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

"If you don't like chocolate, maybe you'll have a taste for these," Ferb said, pointing to a package of black licorice that nobody wanted.

The alien ripped it open and swallowed a handful, choking a little, but pleased with the taste nonetheless. He downed half the bag in ten seconds flat, and glanced at a sleeve of Saltines. "So you guys gonna eat those or what?"

"Well, I guess we could take a break," Phineas replied. He and Ferb sat in the shade of the tree and snacked on crackers, cookies, and candy with a very short alien. It probably wasn't the weirdest thing they'd ever done.

"So… what's with that loud, squeaky girl with the pink bow?" Zim attempted at a conversation.

"You mean Isabella," Phineas corrected. "What about her?"

Zim frowned. "She seems to have a lot of… oh, what's that word? Adoration towards you."

Phineas opened his mouth to answer, however a shrill voice pierced the air. "Phineas! Ferb! You two are so busted!" it shrieked. Zim looked up at the window with twitching eyes, wishing he hadn't left his ray gun in his own universe. Honestly, that red-headed girl was just as bad as Dib.

Candace noticed the alien's annoyed gaze and frowned at him. "Hey! Green kid! You're going down, too! And what is that?" She pointed at the walking metal machine that still sat under the tree.

"It's a—"

"I don't care what it is; I'm still telling Mom!" With that said, she closed the window with a frustrated sigh. She turned to the boy with a big head topped with black hair sitting on her bed. He was currently engrossed in a teen magazine she'd been reading earlier.

"I already called my mom and told her what Phineas and Ferb are doing," Candace interrupted Dib, who looked up in surprise.

"So what do we do now?" Dib asked, setting down the magazine.

"Now we sit and wait." She turned back to the window.

Dib raised an eyebrow. "So we're not going to collect evidence?"

"Evidence? I can never get any cold, hard evidence against them! It's like the universe won't allow them to get in trouble!" Candace cried.

Dib nodded in agreement. "I know what you mean. In fact, this one time I was spying on Zim outside of his base, trying to take pictures, but this squirrel attacked me! I fell off the fence I was sitting on into a bush, but not before getting plenty of pictures of Zim without his disguise. Although some were really blurry…," Dib trailed off.

"So nobody else knows he's an alien? It's obvious!"

Dib huffed unhappily, "Yeah. I know, but everybody at Skool thinks I'm crazy. I mean it's obvious!" Candace continued spying on Zim and her brothers, who were currently finishing the pile of snacks and cleaning up the wrappers. Dib joined her by the window. "Just look at him! Taunting us with his snacks! And why are your brothers helping him anyway? Shouldn't we warn them about how dangerous he could be?"

The teenage girl waved a hand at him. "I'm sure they already know he's an alien. That just gives me more reason to bust him, too. And anyway, he doesn't look that dangerous," she commented.

"He's trying to take over Earth!" Dib cried, jumping up and waving his arms around enthusiastically. "Well, the Earth in my universe," he added as an afterthought.

"And has he ever come close to succeeding?" Candace asked dubiously. Dib shook his head and started to ramble, but Candace spaced out. The short, green kid looked harmless. In fact, to her, he seemed kind of pathetic. Anyway, she promised Dib that she would help him. "We should keep a lookout for Mom," she said out loud, more to herself then Dib. "I'll do that. You stay here and collect evidence or whatever." Candace went downstairs and positioned herself on the couch facing the backyard for easy access to the front door but still close enough to the stairs so Dib would hear her if she called.

Dib squealed happily in response and took over the post by the window overlooking the backyard, where the brothers were currently talking to the purple-haired girl who'd come through the UTP with Zim.

"The part we need to finish the UTP is an electromagnetic adapter. Without it, we can't fix it," Phineas was explaining. "Those are commonly found in Game Slaves, and since we don't have one, we used this," Phineas pointed to the mysterious metal machine under the tree (So that's what it does, Dib thought), "to locate one. Apparently, the only one in the Tri-State Area is in your video game."

Gaz frowned at him. "You want my Game Slave so you can take it apart? No way."

"We don't have time for this! Give me it, Dib-sister!" Zim yelled and held out his hand for it.

Dib jumped in surprise when he heard Candace yell that her mom was home; he ran down the stairs to greet Mrs. Flynn-Fletcher.

Meanwhile, in the backyard, Isabella was attempting to convince Gaz to give up her precious Game Slave. Her loyal Fireside Girls were standing by, wondering what was going on and if they were going to help Gaz with her video game. "Come on, Gaz, it's just a game. Wouldn't you much rather be with your family? Don't you want to get back home?" the Fireside Girl cajoled, not realizing she'd struck a nerve.

Gaz growled, getting ready to release her rage on somebody, when Zim suddenly and unexpectedly cried, "Yes! I must get back to my base! Give me that game, filthy human!" The Irken all but attacked her in his attempts to wrestle the Game Slave from Gaz's protective clutches. She pushed him off and nearly kicked him in his squeedily-spooch, if it wasn't for his small stature and ability to quickly roll out of the way. He jumped up and, with a crazed glint in his contact-lens-blue eyes, lunged again for the game in Gaz's hand.

The bystanders, shocked by Zim's outburst, were jolted from their stupor, and grabbed Zim's arms to hold him back, all while Isabella tried to calm him and Zim yelled at them to let him go. In the chaos, Gaz tried to back away from Zim's flailing limbs, but tripped over someone's outstretched foot, causing her Game Slave to go flying into the UTP, which had been left on by the brothers.

Her game was swallowed in a purple light; Gaz jumped in after it without a second thought. With a flash of purple light, she, her Game Slave, and the UTP were gone. By the time they got Zim to finally stop shouting, they realized there was a distinct lack of purple hair. Isabella was the first to notice. "Hey… where's Gaz?"