A/N: Hello all, hope you're all doing well out there. I know that there's probably going to be some grumbling that I'm coming out with something other than an update to one of my major ongoing stories, but don't worry, those are in the works and will be coming soon. Please be patient.
In the meantime, here's another one of The Cowardly Christian's prompts, this time one not New Adventures adjacent, hence it being a standalone instead of part of the Mature Edition. TCC offered this one up as an idea for a Halloween story years ago, but other things kept coming up that prevented me from being able to write it for that. So, when he suggested I do it now as my end of our latest exchange, we decided I should just do it as soon as possible, rather than wait for Halloween and risk something coming up again. So please, enjoy this little preview of the soon to arrive spooky season!
Typical content warning for stories based on TCC's prompts – there will be nudity, crude humor, and character bashing (specifically of Gaz; if it helps, remember that this is the unlikeable one-dimensional version from the show, not the more nuanced one from the comics and ETF); to compensate for most of this, like in the Mature Edition, all the human characters are aged up to their late teens. If this isn't to your liking, feel free to not read the story.
Oh, and one more thing, this story contains small but critical appearances of characters/concepts from other fandoms, but not enough to the point that I feel the need to place this story in the crossover section. Just FYI.
Okay, all that said, read on!
Disclaimer: I do not, have never, and will never own Invader Zim. Nor for the matter do I own Tremors or The Nightmare Before Christmas.
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Happy Frightmares
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As the end of October rolled around, the Halloween spirit settled heavily onto the city. Grocery stores front-loaded themselves with enough candy to give people diabetes from the mere sight, costume shops whose wares varied from movie quality to shoddy popped into existence all over town, and decorations were displayed virtually everywhere. Wherever you went, there was no way to avoid the atmosphere of the spooky season.
This was true even in the local Hi Skool, where the already usually dark and twisted atmosphere had been heightened by the various decorations set up throughout the halls. Banners and posters were strung up on every wall, prop tables containing Jack-O-Lanterns, witch cauldrons, and other such items were set up every few yards, and cobwebs were clustered in every corner of the ceiling… although those were mostly the result of the skool's creepy janitor taking the season as an excuse to be lazy in his duties.
In any case, there was also one particular thing that had caught the student body's attention when it had gone up midway through the month.
"A costume contest?" Dib asked the generally shared question, as he and a small group of students stood in front of one of the fliers that had been put up across the building, "That's oddly fun for a skool event."
"Eh, they're probably being forced to do this by the Skool Board or something," Gaz commented from next to him, only half-paying attention to what was happening as her primary focus remained as always on her Game Slave, "I hear the last skool that ignored orders from the board got shut down and bulldozed to make room for a tenement block."
"Yeah, that sounds about right," Dib admitted, continuing to examine the flier, "I mean, they're even offering prizes. I cannot believe that this skool would spend money on rewards for its students unless they're being forced to."
"Tch, like these crap prizes are worth anything?" Torque scoffed from the other side of the crowd. The jock gestured towards the bottom part of the flier, where the prizes were actually listed, "I mean, look at this. One of the prize options for first place is some moldy old book. I bet even a nerd like you wouldn't want that thing, Membrane."
Rolling his eyes at the cliché insult, Dib turned his attention to that one part of the flier he hadn't read yet, the list of prizes. Or rather, potential prizes, as the contest winner would only be allowed to pick one. And looking at the list, Dib could admit that they all looked like pretty low-cost and bland options… until he saw the last one, and his eyes widened in shock.
"No way!" he exclaimed in excitement, "How the hell did they get an actual copy of the Necronomicon?!"
"Ugh, and of course the lamest prize is some of Dib's freaky paranormal stuff," Zita groaned, earning mutters of similar comments from the rest of the crowd.
"Don't you realize what this is?!" Dib demanded, whirling on the crowd, "This is the oldest and most powerful book of eldritch magic ever written, and they're just handing it out as a prize to a damn costume contest!"
"Yeah, whatever. Save it for your conspiracy forums, weirdo," Torque sad with a harsh laugh, most of the crowd echoed him as they dispersed down the hall, leaving behind a fuming Dib and apathetic Gaz.
"Seriously? They can all just brush off something as huge as this?" Dib grumbled, "Well, you know what? I'm going to enter that contest, win the Necronomicon, use its spells to defeat Zim for good, and prove the existence of the supernatural! And then they'll all finally know I'm not crazy! And then-!"
"Shut it, your voice is giving me a migraine," Gaz growled, instantly shutting Dib up, "And I don't care if you want to humiliate yourself with this dumb contest just to win some stupid magic book, but just know that if you use any of its spells on me, I will beat you to death with your own intestines. Got it?"
"I learned my lesson about that!" Dib protested in panic, holding his hands up defensively. Wanting to change the subject quickly before Gaz lashed out in anger at memory of the Pigmouth incident, he asked, "So, uh, are you going to enter the contest too?"
"You really think I'm going to waste my time parading myself in front of a bunch of morons just for the chance of maybe winning some completely worthless prize?" Gaz snorted, "Unlike you, I have a little dignity."
"Well, I-"
"I'm done with this pointless conversation. Do whatever you want, I don't care," Gaz said, cutting Dib off and walking away without another look at her brother, who watched her go and decided to count his blessings that she hadn't hit him just for good measure. And with that rather depressing thought, he walked down the hallway towards his own next class, oblivious to the fact that this whole exchange had had a spectator.
Tak stood at the corner of the hallway, where she'd stopped when she'd noticed the crowd and silently observed them to see what had gathered their collective attention. She'd quickly lost interest when she'd heard it was just a pointless contest, and had been about to dismiss it and walk away, when Dib had started ranting about the magic book that was apparently one of the prizes. That had recaptured her attention fully, and she now approached the flier to examine it more closely.
One might expect that an alien from a species whose tech level could best be described as "stupidly advanced" would be dismissive of the existence of magic. However, Tak had been on Earth enough years to have experienced its supernatural side firsthand, more often than not as a side-effect of Dib's perpetually-doomed efforts to expose it to the mindless masses of this planet. Therefore, if he was rambling about this book having great power at its disposal, it was something she was going to ignore.
"Hmm, if this ugly thing really is as powerful as Dib says, that could be quite useful," she mused to herself as she looked at the picture of the Necronomicon listed in the prize section. Mind thus made up to enter and win the costume contest, Tak turned and walked off down the hall, thoughts swirling with ideas of how she'd use the book to finally beat Zim and conquer this miserable planet.
Of course, if she knew what she was going to have to go through to get to that point, she might have just abandoned the plan right now…
XXXXXXX
For the next two weeks, Dib dedicated himself wholly to preparing his costume for the contest. He'd been worried that he wouldn't have the time for it, since his free time outside of skool was usually consumed by fighting Zim. However, it seemed that the mad Irken was too busy focusing on his own "brilliant" plans for Halloween, which he'd of course ranted at length about to Dib while crowing that the human would never figure it out – he and GIR were going to go around and steal candy to create a "cavity gun" to rot people's teeth so that they couldn't eat food, and thus starve the human race out of existence.
Frankly, Dib wasn't even going to waste energy on fighting him over something that stupid. He'd long since learned to tell the difference between Zim's legitimately threatening plans and the ones that were inherently flawed enough that they'd fall apart on their own. And honestly, with how advanced dental technology was these days, Dib didn't see any long-term problems from this plan even if Zim pulled it off. Which was assuming that GIR didn't just eat all the candy before Zim could use it, which seemed more likely.
Anyway, with Dib's main distraction out of the way, and Tak also being quiet (which wasn't too alarming, since unlike Zim's plans of the week, she often went months without trying anything), Dib was able to completely focus on creating his costume. And he put a lot of work into it, as it wasn't just some latex suit and mask, but a full-sized replica of a Graboid from Tremors, one of his favorite monster movie series. It was the size of queen-sized bed, with simplistic animatronic controls to move its head around, while Dib sat inside the main body, able to view things through a small camera hidden in the mouth among the grabber tentacles.
Admittedly, there were some problems – aside from his vision being limited down to that one camera, which was a drawback Dib was willing to just deal with, the size and thickness of the costume, as well as the power for the animatronics and camera, all made the thing very hot to spend more than a few minutes in. But that was an easy enough problem to fix, as he installed an AC unit into the tail section of the costume behind him, which a few tests confirmed was enough to keep the costume's interior comfortably cool. Heck, he could not only stay fully dressed within it, but even keep his lucky trench coat on.
All-in-all, he was completely satisfied with the end result, and was exceedingly optimistic about his chances to win the contest, much to Gaz's annoyance at his excitement. Speaking of whom, she'd spent the whole two weeks constantly scoffing and rolling her eyes at Dib's efforts, as well as all the chatter around skool as everyone else likewise got themselves worked up in preparations for both the contest itself and the party that it was being held as part of.
As such, as skool was letting out on Halloween afternoon, Gaz gave a deeper sigh of relief than normal upon exiting her last class of the day.
"At least once this is over with, I'll only have the normal level of stupidity around here," she muttered to herself as she walked down the hall towards the exit, trying to tune out the chatter all around her as everyone talked at length about how much they were all looking forward to the party and contest that night. It was enough to actually put off her enjoyment of Halloween as a holiday… well, that and the fact that she was a few years too old to trick-or-treat without being a weirdo. That had spoiled Halloween for her awhile back, and all this ridiculous cheer was just making it worse for her.
With that in mind, Gaz's kneejerk reaction to passing another flier for the contest was to roll her eyes at it, but in the process caused her gaze to fall on the prize section, and what she saw caused he to stop short and nearly stumble. She snapped her head around and leaned down to look more closely and make sure that she wasn't imagining what she thought she saw, but it was in fact what she thought it was – there, next to the listing for the Necronomicon was the option for a gift card for one year of free pizza at any Bloaty's Pizza Hog restaurant.
Gaz could only stare at that part of the flier in utter disbelief, brain brought to a screeching halt by this revelation. She stood there slack-jawed for several minutes, before her eye started twitching and she snapped back to full awareness.
"Are you fucking kidding me?!" she screamed, everyone still in her vicinity quickly fleeing the area, instincts yelling at them to escape close proximity to her wrath, "They've had a prize that's actually worth something this whole damn time?! Why the fuck didn't Dib tell me about this?!"
More or less willfully ignoring the fact that she herself had never bothered to inspect the poster closely enough to notice this prize before, Gaz instead aimed her anger at this sudden situation towards Dib, which only grew by the second as she fully processed what this all meant. She wanted that year of free pizza, she needed it, but how the hell was she supposed to get it now? It was only a few hours until the contest, she didn't have to time to make a costume from scratch, and she knew that some off-the-rack costume wouldn't cut it; the poster outright stated that originality was one of the things they were going to be judging on.
"Dammit, dammit, dammit!" she growled, punching a dent into a locker door as she stomped down the hallway towards the exit, "What am I supposed to do? Get Dib to win it for me? No, he'll only want his stupid eldritch book instead of getting me what I want, the selfish bastard. He'll just whine about all the effort he put into making his dumb costume, with its animatronics and AC and…"
Gaz trailed off in angry grumbling as she continued walking, only to slow to a stop as an idea came to her. As it quickly took shape in her mind, an evil grin grew on her face, and she started chuckling nastily.
"Oh yeah, that should work just nicely," she said with a laugh, before running off towards home to implement her new plan and get what she wanted.
XXXXXXX
As night fell over the city, Tak made her way down the streets towards the Hi Skool, trying to repress how exposed she felt. She'd ultimately decided against wearing an actual costume and to simply enter the contest in her true form, figuring that she could just pass it off as an extremely realistic outfit, which should earn her extra points with the contest judges. It was a brilliant idea, if she said so herself… though it felt less clever when she'd noticed Zim had apparently had the same thought, he and his insane robot wandering the city without disguises as they carried out whatever moronic plan Zim had cooked up, blending in with the trick-or-treaters.
Still, that aside, she did feel confident in her plan, despite how awkward it was to be walking around in the open with her hologram switched off. She just forced herself to ignore that discomfort and focus on the victory that was within her grasp.
"Yes, no need to worry. I just need to go in there and win," she said to herself as she walked up to the Hi Skool.
"Yeah, good luck with that," the pimply-faced twentysomething who had been hired as the ticket-taker said from his table outside the doors as Tak approached, having evidently heard her. Hearing this, Tak glared at the man.
"And what is that supposed to mean?" she demanded.
"Didn't you read the rules on the flier?" the ticket-taker asked with a sneer, "The judges are going to be looking for three things primarily – commitment, how disgusting and/or scary the costume is, and originality. And not only are there already a hundred people in alien costumes already here, but frankly most of them are more convincing than yours. I mean, what did you use for those antennae, twigs?"
Tak growled in anger at the blatant insult, as well as a little confusion as to how this fool could possibly mistake her superior Irken form for a shoddy costume. However, rather than lash out and make a potential scene, she took a calming breath and decided to not bother overreacting to the situation.
ZAP
Instead, she just vaporized the annoyance with a PAK leg blast and marched past his table towards the doors behind them, which happened to be the exterior doors of the Hi Skool gym, where the party was being held. Apparently, the staff had been concerned that leaving even just the short interior distance from the building's front doors to the gym open to the partying students would risk vandalism, so had declared that only the gym itself could be used for the duration of the party. Personally, Tak felt that that was just a bunch of melodramatic paranoia, but decided not to get hung up on it; she was just here to win the contest and get that book, and the less time she had to spend in this disgusting building, the better.
That feeling only intensified as Tak passed through the doors and her senses were immediately assaulted by the sights, sounds, and smells of a large group of partying human teenagers. Cringing at the volume of the music and laughter, Tak squinted her eyes to see better in the lighting, which had been set at a level low enough to apparently be deemed "spooky". She saw that a stage had been set up at one end of the room, presumably for where the contestants would present themselves, next to which was a table bearing a sign that read "Judges", at which were seated Miss Bitters, Nny the creepy janitor, and a third figure that Tak didn't recognize, who was dressed as a skeleton wearing a fancy suit. His presence confused her for a moment, but after a moment she shrugged it off as unimportant and turned her attention towards the crowd.
It looked like virtually every student in the Hi Skool had shown up, and most of them were in costume. And much to Tak's disgruntlement, she saw that there were indeed a great many people dressed up as what humans thought aliens looked like. They all ranged in quality, but Tak still felt that there was no way that even the best of them could possibly match her actual appearance… but if the judges shared that idiot ticket-taker's lack of logic and common sense (and they were human, so they probably would), they would probably likewise find some flaw in her "costume" that would deny her a victory. And she was not going to lose something this simple for such a ridiculous reason.
"I may need to upgrade things a bit," she muttered to herself. Stalking along the edges of the room until she reached the storage closet, she ducked inside and shut the door behind her. Then she pulled a tablet out of her PAK and started searching through human pop culture sites to find something she could add on top of her regular appearance to make herself look more awe-inspiring and guarantee she'd win.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the room, Dib was wandering about in his Graboid costume, sticking to the edges of the room so as to avoid bumping into anyone or risking damage to the suit. Though that was quickly becoming the least of his problems – shortly after he'd arrived at the party, the costume's AC had started emitting an erratic sputtering sound, and then had promptly died as something burned out inside it. And without that constant influx of cool air, the interior of the costume was quickly growing uncomfortably warm. Dib's first instinct was to run home to fix it, but he almost immediately shot that down, as he knew it would take too long, and he'd never get back in time for the start of the contest, which would disqualify him and render all his work pointless. Not wanting to face that, he'd decided to just tough it out long enough to get into the contest and win the Necronomicon.
But now he was regretting it, as it was just so hot, and only getting hotter by the minute. Sweating profusely, he eventually removed his trench coat for some relief, tossing it into a small compartment in the side of the costume's interior that he'd built to safely transport the Necronomicon in, but which had enough room to spare for other things. Doing this brought him a brief reprieve, but the heat only seemed to intensify as time went by, and a few minutes later he found himself stripping off his shirt as well, then his shoes and socks, and then his pants, soon leaving him in just his underwear. And it wasn't long before that had to go, too.
"Well, this might be the most humiliating thing that's ever happened to me," Dib muttered to himself as he tossed his underwear into the compartment, leaving him completely naked inside the costume, "I mean, at least no one can see me, but this is still so embarrassing… and hot! How hot can this thing get? I think I'm actually losing weight from how much I'm sweating in here! Dammit, if only there was a way that I could fix this thing without heading home…"
Dib's mind whirled as he tried to find a solution to his problem. At the rate things were going, he'd soon pass out from heat exhaustion, and even leaving aside the potential health crisis that would cause, it would cost him the contest. He needed to fix the AC now, but how?
Then the camera mounted in the costume's head happened to sweep over the door leading from the gym into the hallway, just as someone exited the room to head towards the nearest bathroom. And while the door was open, Dib caught a glimpse of a door further down the hall, marked with a sign that read "Shop Class". And seeing that caused Dib's overheated brain to fire as an idea hit him.
"That's it! I can get tools or spare parts in the shop class to fix the AC, or at least patch it up enough to make things more manageable in here," Dib exclaimed, as he began making his way toward the exit as fast as the costume could move.
While all this was going on, the judges were sitting at their table, watching the party with varying levels of interest. Which is to say that Miss Bitters and Nny were utterly apathetic and bored, while the mystery man in the disturbingly realistic skeleton costume was practically gleeful.
"Who are you again?" Nny asked the skeleton, not actually interested but looking for any kind of distraction from the boredom.
"Jack Skellington, my good man," the skeleton replied with a two-fingered salute, "I was just passing through town looking for a good time for the holiday, and heard that the school… er, I mean, skool, was looking for volunteers for this charming contest. It sounded like fun."
"Nothing fun has ever or will ever happen in this godforsaken building and never will," Miss Bitters sneered, "I'm only here because I literally can't leave the building, so if I'm going to be stuck here at the same time all these barely sentient walking sacks of hormones are making a nuisance of themselves, it might as well be in a way that guarantees me overtime pay."
"Ditto for me on the pay," Nny stated, "Not that it's a whole lot extra from usual. Probably why we didn't have a third person willing to do likewise. Honestly surprised you were willing to do this for such shit pay."
"Oh, I'm not being paid, I agreed to do this for free. The experience is all I need," Jack explained happily.
"…You're an idiot," Nny said after a moment, while Miss Bitters scoffed and looked away in disgust. Jack, not offended by the blatant insult, turned his attention back to the room at large, reflecting on what brought him here.
Unbeknownst to his companions of the night, Jack Skellington was not just some guy in a costume. He was in fact the Pumpkin King, the ruler of the otherworldly dimension known as Halloween Town, the place from whence the whole concept of the holiday was personified and flowed forth every year. As its ruler, Jack's job was to make sure everything went smoothly and allowed for a holiday that could be enjoyed by all, something he'd gleefully done for centuries, since the days when Halloween was still Samhain. But, over the recent decades, he'd found a malaise creeping in over doing the same thing every year, so he'd started searching for other ways to make the holiday more special for him. And after the… unfortunate incident with Santa Claus a few years ago, he'd decided the best way to do that was to actually go out into the mortal world during Halloween and experience it alongside the humans, in hopes of recapturing the old spark by seeing that wonderful mix of fear and joy in their eyes.
Hence why he was here. Jack hadn't been lying when he'd said that he was just passing through town; he'd thrown a dart at a map and hit this wonderfully grotesque city at random, and decided to see what it had to offer. The costume contest had caught his eye socket, and he'd happily jumped on the opportunity to help encourage the young people to maintain their love of dressing up on Halloween even as they moved towards adulthood.
And for the most part it seemed to have worked, he mused to himself as he sipped from a cup of punch and scanned the room. They were such a wide variety of costumes on display, ranging from the mundane and cliché to the incredibly innovative, like that impressively detailed Graboid costume… which was making its way out of the room as fast as it could apparently go?
Jack frowned as he watched this. True, it could just be that whomever was in that costume just needed to use the bathroom or had some similarly mundane reason for stepping out from the party, but his instincts told him that there was something more at foot here, and he'd long since learned to trust his intuition. So, he stood up from the table, regaining the attention of his fellow judges.
"Well, we have some time to pass before the contest starts. I'm going to go stretch my legs," he said, deciding there was no reason to make it look like he was potentially overreacting to whatever the situation was.
"I don't care," Miss Bitters said, while Nny shrugged apathetically.
Choosing not to take offense at those responses, Jack strolled towards the door that the Graboid had exited through. As he reached it, he belatedly realized he was still holding his half-empty cup of punch, and with a shrug tossed it over his shoulder towards a nearby trashcan… not noticing as he did that Tak emerged from the closet right next to where the can was placed. Being focused as she was on examining the costume she'd created from her hologram generator, that of futuristic yet medieval-looking armor that would hopefully let her pass herself off as what humans thought alien soldiers were supposed to look like, she didn't see the cup coming until it had smacked against the side of her head, splattering the punch all over her implant.
ZAP
"GAAAHHH!" Tak screamed as her implant short-circuited, electricity coursing through her, and every piece of machinery within her.
Her hologram generator was the first to go, bursting with a pop of sparks and causing her costume to disperse. That would have manageable, if annoying, but unfortunately for Tak, it was about to get much worse – a little known fact was that Irken clothing was imbued with nanites, which were designed to repair damage and remove filth, eliminating the need to ever waste time on mending or washing the clothes. Unfortunately, they were also highly conductive under the right (or wrong) circumstances, which the current ones happened to qualify as. The electricity surged through Tak's clothes, not just frying the nanites but in the process causing them to burn the fabric they were embedded into. As such, by the time the electricity died down a few moments later, Tak's clothes were completely blackened, still smoldering and smoking in a few patches as she stood there, swaying and disoriented from the electrocution.
POOF
And then, due to all the damage done on a microscopic level, Tak's ruined clothes proceeded to completely fall apart, disintegrating into ash. By the time she realized what was happening, it was too late for even a desperate and futile attempt to grab the destroyed remnants before they could fall away from her body into a heap on the floor, leaving her standing there completely naked.
Tak stood there, totally stunned, mind momentarily frozen by the shock of trying to process what had just happened. Then her face darkened in a massive blush as she gave a high-pitched yelp and covered herself as best she could with her arms, unable to think of anything to do in this situation – as previously stated, those nanites made removing Irken clothing virtually pointless, so this was actually the first time in decades that she'd been naked. Not since she was a smeet had she been exposed and vulnerable like this, and it was in front of a bunch of humans! She was about to become a laughingstock to a bunch of barely-evolved apes!
"Hey babe, nice alien bodysuit!" a guy dressed like a pirate said as he walked past her, clearly checking her out but in the way of someone who assumes he's looking at a sexy outfit, not seeing nudity.
"…Okay, so evidently, they're all so stupid they think this is just a costume and don't realize I'm actually naked. I can work with this," Tak muttered to herself, embarrassment dialing back slightly at that realization and allowing her to start focusing herself again. Doing a quick mental check on her PAK's functionality, she cursed as she realized that everything except the hardwired life support systems had been burned out. No holograms or cloaking to conceal her nudity, no spider legs to help her get out of there and to safety faster, not even any weapons to kill everyone who dared look at her unwillingly bared form. So, to summarize, she had absolutely nothing to help her out of this situation.
"Irk damn it all… screw it, I'm not sitting around here like this, no prize is worth it," she said, deciding to just head home and call it a night; with any luck, everyone on the street would be as oblivious as the morons here, allowing her to save at last some of her dignity. With that thought firmly in mind, she turned and started stomping towards the exit, grimacing as she realized that meant passing through the partying crowd but swallowing her pride and pressing on. It should only take a few minutes, and then-
"CONGA!" someone shouted as the music playing over the noises of the crowd changed. Tak blinked in confusion as the throng around her rapidly shifted around her, and then yelped again as she suddenly found herself grabbed from behind and pushed forward into the person ahead of her, quickly realizing she'd been forced into a conga line.
"What the-? Hey, let me go, I don't want any part of this nonsense!" she shrieked, blushing fiercely again at the humiliation of having humans pressed against her nude body from both sides. However, her protests were ignored as the line danced, dragging her along with it, too flustered to think to use her superior strength to break free and thus being stuck forced to stay as part of the festivities.
XXXXXXX
Dib was drenched in sweat and panting for breath by the time he managed to reach the shop classroom, which thankfully was unlocked, allowing him to shove the door open with his costume's bulk and shuffle his way inside. Once he was, he started to open up the costume's exit hatch, only to stop as his heat-exhausted mind belatedly remembered his nudity.
"Heh, oops, almost forgot to get dressed again," he chuckled weakly as he opened up the compartment holding his clothes, "That would have been embarrassing, especially considering someone would have probably walked in, knowing… my…"
Dib trailed off as he stared down into the compartment. The very empty compartment, which didn't have so much as one of Dib's socks in it, much less the rest of his clothes.
"Wh-what? Where the hell are my clothes?!" Dib spluttered, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Hoping desperately that he was just suffering from some sort of dehydration-induced hallucination, he frantically reached into the compartment and felt around despite being able to see the entire thing. As expected, he didn't find his clothes anywhere… but he did find, to his further shock, a thin line cut clean through the fabric and rubber that formed the exterior of the costume and acted as the back wall of the compartment. It wasn't visible initially, but the second any pressure was applied it gave, creating a hole, which Dib's clothes must have been falling through as soon as he tossed them into the compartment.
"No, no, nononononono, how did this happen!" Dib screamed, "The costume couldn't just fall apart like this, how is this even possible, what am I supposed to do?! And dammit, it's too hot in here to even think straight!"
Mind spiraling due to both the heat and the mounting amounts of frustration and panic, Dib decided to prioritize the problem he could actually do something about in the moment. Throwing open the exit hatch, he scrambled out of the costume and collapsed into a heap on the floor, immediately sighing in relief at the feeling of the cool air and cooler linoleum on his overheated body. It still wasn't enough, though, and looking around he quickly spotted a large sink used for washing the shop tools. Crawling to his feet, he stumbled over to it and turned the faucet on, shoving his head under the stream of cool water and allowing it to run over him for several minutes until he finally felt reinvigorated.
"Thank goodness, that feels so much better," he said with a sigh as he eventually pulled himself out from under the water and shut it off, then dried himself off with a nearby hand towel, which he looked at morosely when he was done with it, "Man, I wish this was bigger so I could actually cover up with it. I mean, yeah, I can hide in the costume for now, but if I win the contest, I'll probably have to get out of it to show who I am and claim the prize. Hmm, there's still some time until the contest starts, so if I move fast, I can probably slip into the locker rooms and grab something to wear, and then-"
"Yeah, good luck with that."
The sudden voice made Dib jump in surprise, dropping the hand towel in the process. He then turned bright red as he just as quickly was reminded of his current undressed state, and his hands instinctively flew down to cover his crotch even as he spun around to face the speaker. He relaxed somewhat, if still being quite embarrassed, when he recognized Gaz standing in the doorway… only to freeze as he realized she was holding up his costume over her head with her trademark superhuman strength.
"Thanks for the costume, bro! I'm in such a good mood, after I win the contest, I might just let you have one slice of my year-long free pizza!" she said with a wicked laugh, before turning and bolting off down the hallway.
Left totally stunned by this series of events, Dib was only able to stand there in shocked silence for nearly a full minute before his mind caught up with what had just happened and he snapped out of it. Face turning red in both humiliation and anger, he ran out after his sister, only to come up short as he looked both ways down the hallway and saw that she was nowhere in sight. She'd completely disappeared, with the only form of cover he'd had left.
"Dammit, of all the times for her to be a selfish bitch," Dib grumbled in rare outright anger at his sister, which faded into renewed embarrassment as he suddenly remembered he was standing stark naked in the middle of the Hi Skool like some cliché nightmare. Blushing deeply again, he tried to retreat back into the shop class until he could come up with a better option, only to find that the door had closed behind him. And worse, it had apparently locked when it had done so, as it refused to budge no matter what he did to try and reopen it.
"Oh, come on!" Dib pleaded, after several minutes of fruitless efforts. Eventually giving up and covering himself as best he could with his hands again, his frantic mind unable to think of anything else to do, he took off running in the opposite direction of the gym in order to at least put distance between himself and everyone else in the building who might see him while he tried to find another option.
As Dib disappeared down the hall, Gaz watched him go with a smirk, peering through the cracked open door of the girls' bathroom she'd dashed into before Dib could emerge from the shop classroom. She could have just run into the gym and put the costume on there, but she had a few things to take care of first. To start with, she climbed inside the costume and, trying not to gag at the smell of Dib's sweat, popped open the AC unit and deftly removed the remote-activated kill switch she'd snuck into it when Dib hadn't been looking, causing it to pop back to life and swiftly cooling the costume's interior off again. She then pulled out a small bottle of super glue and used it to patch up the tear she'd cut into the side of the costume; she wasn't going to be using that compartment for anything, but she couldn't risk one of the judges seeing the tear and knocking off points for it.
"Well, this was a lot of work to pull off, but definitely worth it," Gaz thought out loud as she settled down within the costume, "I mean, I probably could have just beat Dib up at home and stolen the costume from him there… nah, this was more fun. And it should definitely teach him a lesson about not being aware of stuff that'll make me happy and doing everything he can to make it happen."
With that hypocritical and petty statement, Gaz waddled the costume out of the bathroom and started making her way back towards the gym. As she did so, she failed to notice Jack, who had clung to and pressed himself against the ceiling in order to avoid being seen while accessing the situation. He'd followed and observed Dib from a distance as he'd made his way to the shop class, watched in confusion as Gaz had likewise stalked her brother and then run off with his costume, been stunned by the state she'd left him in, and finally been hit with uncharacteristic rage when he'd heard her bragging to herself about what she'd done.
"How shameful, to treat one's own sibling so horrendously," Jack said lowly as he dropped down to the floor and glared at the retreating back of Gaz's stolen costume, "And on my holiday? Oh no, little miss, this will not go unfinished."
Calling upon his full powers as King of Halloween in a way that he rarely did more than once every few centuries, Jack conjured up a dark curse and launched it at Gaz. It flew through the air in a blur of midnight-black energy and hit her dead on, washing over both the costume and the girl within it, who stopped dead in her tracks as a strange feeling overwhelmed her.
"What the hell was- GAAAAHHHH!" Gaz started to say, only to scream as she was suddenly hit with agony unlike anything she'd ever known. It was so intense that her mind quickly blanked out, which was probably a mercy, as she was spared having to actually experience what came next – her body began melting into a fleshy mush, while the costume around her melted as well, the rubber and fabric and metal becoming organic as it merged with what was left of Gaz. The resulting mess shifted and reshaped itself, rapidly taking on the form of strange organs and orange flesh and blood, and before long the costume had become very real.
The Graboid that had until just recently been Gaz Membrane filled the hallway, its eyeless head sweeping back and forth as its intense sense of hearing took in its surroundings. Whatever was left of Gaz's consciousness was almost immediately suppressed by the Graboid's instincts and intense hunger. With those driving it, the beast started to slither towards the gym, drawn by the sounds of many prey creatures all gathered in one place-
"Outside," Jack snapped in a commanding tone. In response to his power compelling it on a subconscious level, the Graboid immediately broke off from its path, instead smashing its head into and through the floor. It quickly burrowed underground and started tunneling away from the Hi Skool, soon leaving the building behind and heading out into the city proper, where it began hunting for any loud sources of sounds indicating prey to feed upon.
Back in the Hi Skool, Jack smirked to himself as he dramatically dusted off his hands and used his foot to smooth over the hole in the floor.
"If you're going to act like a beast, you may as well actually be one. And I'm sure she's bound to find herself in quite the predicament when the curse ends with sunrise," the Pumpkin King chuckled to himself as he headed back into the gym, content with having balanced the scales… and so caught up in his righteous fury that he completely forgot about Dib in the process.
As such, it was an empty hallway that Dib returned to several minutes later, still completely naked. He'd failed to find anything to cover himself with, and worse, every door and window in the building was locked, the skool staff apparently quite determined that the partygoers would only be passing through the gym's exterior doors. Dib was fairly certain that was a fire code violation, but he also figured no one on the staff cared all that much.
In any case, with no other way out, Dib found himself cowering outside the interior doors to the gym, contemplating his only remaining option – streaking through the gym, hopefully fast enough that no one would recognize him, exit the building, and then run home, and with any luck no one would see or stop him before he managed to get home. Yep, he just needed a lot of luck.
"…Oh, I'm doomed," he groaned to himself, already imagining the endless mockery he was about to be faced with, "Could this possibly get any worse?"
Under normal circumstances, even without Dib's terrible luck, this would be the point where things did in fact get worse. However, it would seem that Dib's lucky stars had aligned for once, because that wasn't what happened.
"Let me go, you primitive maggots!"
Unbeknownst to Dib, inside the gym, Tak was still stuck in the conga line. She had finally managed to gather her wits enough to start actually fighting back against the humans' holds on her, but the masses of them pressing against her from both sides was making it difficult. She eventually managed to slip partially free, but just before she could break out completely, the line all suddenly kicked out as one. The force of this sent her flying through the air, with her slamming into and through the doors, bursting into the hallway and smacking into Dib, sending them both tumbling down the hall to collapse on the floor. Thankful for whatever dignity they had left, they weren't left in tangled up heap, but that didn't stop them from getting a full eyeful of each other as they stumbled back to their feet and froze in place.
"Uh…" was all Dib could say, brain broken by the sci-fi nerd's dream standing fully bared in front of him. Tak, for her part, was also totally shocked, mostly for how Dib was more athletically built and buff than she'd have expected. But also for a very particular part of him, which was getting even more prominent as he gawked at her. Unable to think of anything else say, she blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
"So, I see that your head is only the second biggest part of you," she said teasingly, causing Dib to blush brightly as he was reminded of his situation, yelping and covering himself with his hands again. Seeing this reminded Tak of her own situation, but frankly by this point she was numbed to it and didn't see the point in even trying to cover up anymore, so she just sighed and planted her hands on her hips.
"Look, I don't know or care how this happened to you too. But I think we can both agree that this has been a long, exhausting night. So how about we just agree to a truce until tomorrow and go find our own ways home?" she asked. Dib blinked as the fully rational despite the circumstances statement cut through the haze of arousal and embarrassment filling his head, and after a moment to process it, just nodded.
"Yeah, I'm not in any condition, or the right head space, to fight whatever scheme just backfired on you," he said, "So, just pretend this whole thing never happened?"
"Agreed. So, let's-" Tak started to say, only to be interrupted as a loudspeaker crackled to life in the gym.
"Attention everyone, the costume contest is about to begin!" Jack's voice proclaimed, "Everyone who wishes to partake, please line up by the stage. Oh, and a reminder of a detail that wasn't on the flyer due to oversight, we are also allowing contestants to enter as couples, so long as there is a matching theme to their costumes!"
Hearing that, a lightbulb went off in Tak's head, and she turned to Dib with a smirk.
"Still want to win that prize?" she asked.
"What?" Dib asked, staring at Tak in confusion.
"We can still win, but only by working together. Then we can split the spells in the Necronomicon between us. Deal?"
"Wha-? No way! First of all, I'm not going to help you get ahold of anything that might give you an advantage in taking over Earth. Secondly, in case you didn't notice, I'm still naked!" he exclaimed, "You might be able to pass as being in a costume, but I can't! I'll be humiliated in front of the whole skool!"
"Like that'll be any different from normal?" Tak asked dryly, "Look, with your luck, you really think you'll be able to get home without being seen? If you're going to be publicly humiliated anyway, you might as well get something out of it for once."
"Er, well…" Dib mumbled, having trouble arguing with that logic. Seeing this, Tak gave another smirk as she decided to apply some basic psychology appropriate for a teenaged human mind in order to hammer her point home.
"And really, if the problem is your self-confidence, I wouldn't worry about it," she said with a sultry tone that made Dib turn very red, "Honestly, I think you'd be the envy of all the boys, and the lust of all the girls. So, what do you say?"
Dib gulped, trying very hard to swallow with his suddenly very dry mouth as a flood of images ran through his mind at those suggestive words. And maybe it was the rush of hormones they triggered, or the fact that seeing Tak bare like this was causing most of his blood to migrate south away from his brain, or maybe he was just finally snapping from the absurdity of the whole situation, but he finally sagged and gave up.
"Okay, fine, you win," he sighed, "So, what's the plan?"
Tak's smirk widened.
XXXXXXX
A short time later, Jack was leaning his head against his palm, that arm planted by the elbow on the judges' table while the fingers of his other hand tapped the tabletop. The reason for this tableau of boredom was the fact that they were down to the last few contestants, and so far, not one of them had been all that worthwhile. While they'd all looked good while they were partying and moving about, getting a close-up look at them on the stage under the spotlights showed most of them to be either cheap, derivative, or a variety of other factors that just made them too dull for even the overeager Jack to find enjoyable.
Though he still thought that Miss Bitters sending all the contestants she deemed rejects down a trapdoor into these "underground classrooms" the skool seemed to have was a bit much. But he was sure that was probably just a metaphor and they were fine… probably.
Jack sighed as the last apparent contestant, a "mummy" who was just wrapped up in toilet paper, was dropped down the trapdoor. To be perfectly honest, he was almost hoping that really was the last of them, because frankly, he didn't know how much more of this mediocrity he could take and keep his faith in Halloween intact.
"Is there anyone else still interested in competing?" he asked morosely.
"Yeah! Us!"
Everyone blinked at the sudden declaration, which was followed by the gym doors being kicked open, and then green and tan blurs as two figures ran up to the stage. Within seconds they came to a stop, and to the shock of the whole crowd resolved into the completely naked forms of Tak and Dib, both standing tall and proud (and also blushing brightly, in Dib's case). There was a moment of stunned silence, and then the crowd of students burst out into laughter; as Dib had predicted, most of it was directed his way due to everyone thinking Tak was in a bodysuit, but like she had said, it actually wasn't entirely that bad.
"Damn, Dib, you're pretty cut for a nerd!" Jessica cheered.
"I guess your upper head didn't get all the big genes, huh?" Zita asked through her giggles.
"Hey! I'm bigger than that wimp!" Torque protested in jealousy.
"Not where it matters, you're not."
As the jeering and innuendo-laden comments flew about, Jack was also staring at the stage in shock, but for a different reason entirely.
"Oh no, that poor boy! I was so focused on punishing his sister, I forgot to help him!" he said, mentally kicking himself for such an oversight. Determined to make things right, he quickly leaned over across Nny's seat to grab Miss Bitters' arm just before she could hit the trapdoor button, "Wait! I know this is totally unexpected, but I'm sure they have an explanation for it!"
"Of course we do!" Tak declared, "You said couples with themed costumes could enter together, right? Well, this is our theme – the demon Lilith seducing Adam away from Eve while they were all still in the Garden of Eden!"
Dib had to admit, despite everything, that he was impressed that Tak actually knew that obscure bit of religious folklore and had figured out how to apply it to their situation. Still, it was taking all his willpower not to give into his instincts and flee the stage, so he really wished that this whole thing would resolve itself quickly.
"Oh yeah?" Nny asked skeptically, "How do we know that's really the case and this isn't some messed up prank? If you're really a couple, kiss!"
"Gladly!" Tak said with a smirk.
"Wait, what- Mmph!" Dib started to say, only for Tak to suddenly grab him and pull him in for a kiss, which quickly deepened into a full make-out session as Dib's whole face went crimson and already visible "excitement" grew even more pronounced. All this, of course, led to more laughter, cat calls, and wolf whistles from the audience, as well as numerous flashes of light as phones were pulled out and pictures taken. But for the first time all night, Dib couldn't care less.
"Eh, good enough for me. Naked's about as committed as you can get," Nny said with a shrug, holding up a scorecard that read 10.
"You must admit, it's original," Jack said, also holding up a 10.
"This is disgusting! …But ironically, that's one of the things we were looking for, so I don't have much of a choice," Miss Bitters grumbled, holding up a third 10, "Fine, Dib and Tak are the winners! They can stay long enough to claim their prize, the rest of you leave now or I'll unleash the hounds!"
The room quickly emptied following that threat, with even Dib and Tak soon being kicked out as well after being allowed to stay long enough to choose and collect their prize. As such, a few minutes later they found themselves outside the Hi Skool, both shivering slightly in the cool autumn air. Dib was holding the Necronomicon over his crotch as makeshift cover, feeling having at least a little modesty preserved was worth the risk of keeping such an unholy text next to his genitals – worst case scenario, he figured, his future children would be born with tentacles.
"So, uh," he said after a few minutes of awkward silence, "I know we agreed to split the spells, but-"
"If it makes you feel more comfortable, we can meet up tomorrow in a neutral place so I can scan a copy of the book," Tak cut in, before her eyes narrowed, "But to be clear, if you bring me a decoy or otherwise try to cheat me, I'll turn you inside out. Understood?"
Paling, and deciding not to push his luck any further than it had been already tonight, Dib quickly nodded. Smirking at this, Tak turned to go, before a thought suddenly occurred to her; not quite sure where it was coming from, but deciding to have some fun before putting this ridiculous night behind her, she went with it.
"You know, absurd amounts of humiliation aside, this was almost fun. We should do this more often," she said with a purr, before quickly reaching over to playfully slap Dib's ass. As he yelped and jumped in surprise, she laughed and walked off, hips swaying a bit more than usual as she went.
Feeling a lot of very conflicting emotions as he watched Tak leave, suddenly having trouble covering himself with the book, Dib stood there quietly for several minutes. Eventually snapping out of it, he decided he was too mentally exhausted to properly handle whatever the hell had just happened, and instead started running home, hoping to do so without anyone else managing to see him in his current state.
So caught up in his own problems as he was, it completely slipped Dib's mind to wonder where Gaz had disappeared to with his stolen costume.
XXXXXXX
And where had Gaz ended up, one might be asking? Well, now driven by her Graboid instincts, she had spent the whole night tunneling all over the city, bursting out of the ground periodically to grab and consume whomever was unlucky enough to have made enough sound to catch her attention. Though thanks to a compulsion placed on her by Jack, it just so happened that everyone she managed to eat were horrible people who deserved it – thugs, hooligans, gangsters, rapists, thieves, drug dealers, etc. All the sorts of scum that wouldn't be missed, and that the city would be better off without.
Eventually, though, this rampage came to an end, as she burst out onto the seaside docks in the middle of a shootout between smugglers and cops. She managed to eat most of the former before latter hit her with enough tasers to knock her unconscious, then dropped a cargo net on her to restrain her in case she woke up. And after a brief period of shock to realize they had just captured a genuine monster, they proceeded to do the only logical thing – they called up Mysterious Mysteries and sold her to them for a tidy profit.
As for the staff of the show, they saw a golden opportunity to finally fix their flagging ratings, and so scheduled an immediate vivisection by their crack team of (Membrane Lab-rejected) scientists, to be livestreamed first thing in the morning. The lab was set up, the scientists were gathered around the large table that the Graboid was strapped to, the cameras were rolling as they lifted their tools in preparation… and then the sun rose outside the building, causing Jack's curse to wear off. With a flash of light, the Graboid changed back Gaz, leaving the sociopathic teen lying there on the table in front of the scientists, show crew, and all their viewers, thoroughly disoriented.
And also completely naked, a bit of extra karma that Jack had woven into his curse ensuring that her clothes wouldn't survive the transformation.
"Gah, what hit me…? EEEP!" she muttered as she sat up on the table, only to yelp as she realized her current situation, turning bright red and covering herself as best she could.
"Hey! That's not a monster, it's just some ugly naked teenager!" one of the scientists yelled, "This whole thing is just some stupid Halloween prank!"
"Damn it, not again!" the show's host shouted, "I'm so sick of insane kids and teens making us look ridiculous! Get her!"
Still too off her mental game from confusion and embarrassment to react in time, Gaz soon found herself swarmed by the show staff and scientists, who proceeded to beat her severely. Much to the enjoyment of anyone in the viewing audience who knew her, including Jack, who was watching via a witch cauldron back in Halloween Town.
All in all, he figured, a perfectly good Halloween.
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The End
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A/N: And done. Sorry if the ending felt rushed, but frankly I was feeling burned out by the time I got to that part and just wanted to wrap it up. Still, hope it was still an enjoyable early preview of spooky season, and that I'll see you all in my main stories' updates.
Anyway, nothing else to say, except to remind everyone to stay safe out there.
Please review!