Zim the Warlord: Irken Reversion
Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim or anything else here
AN Thanks to Zim'sMostLoyal Servant, Zim the Warlord now has a TV Trope Page dedicated to it!
"So I have to work from seven PM to three AM?" Zim questioned as he spoke into a cellphone. Well, a human cellphone inside an Irken shell that made the primitive communication device at least moderately useful; hence how he was in space, tapping his fingers on the controls of his voot cruiser, lightyears from Earth, and talking to someone on said dirtball.
"AM to PM, Zim. Interns get the day shift," Professor Membrane answered on the other end.
"Grr, I despise this bi-quotidian time system. Military time is much more sensible," Zim complained in frustration.
"Oh, I agree. I also occasionally weigh the pros and cons of advocating for globally synchronized time instead of this time zone thing we have," Membrance said sympathetically. "But I'm confused. Did you want the graveyard shift?"
"Eh? It's a bit menial, but Zim does not mind disposing of bodies," Zim offered curiously.
"Hahaha! Good one. Though we could always use more help disposing- anyway, if you want to join the nightshift, I can transfer you after the obligatory four months," Membrane offered.
"That would probably be most agreeable, but we'll see how things develop. Anyway, that's not actually why I called. You recall how I recently returned from my home, er, country?" Zim asked curiously.
"Yes, you were gone for six months, and my son refused to leave his room for...three? Four months? I was growing worried by the third," Membrane stated thoughtfully.
"Yes, I am regularly suppressing the memory of your spawn's transformation. Anyway, I actually have some, uh, relatives staying with me now. Cousins on a bit of a hard spot," Zim explained vaguely.
"Zim, I can't get them a job as well," the professor forewarned.
"No, no, nothing like that. See, one of them has become...a bit of a game nut," Zim explained with a hint of apology.
"Gaz met him?" Membrane guessed knowingly.
"You tell me," Zim said with a chuckle before holding the phone to a speaker on his controls, pressing a button as Gaz's voice filtered through.
"Yaaaa! Eat laser, Space Rocks! Ha! You missed! Ahh! Space Crabs!" Gaz's voice rang through with an unusual amount of glee. Zim chuckled as he watched her blasting space rocks with her now-two gauntlets, her body otherwise protected by a spacesuit with an invisible helmet.
"It's the first Game Slave all over again," Membrane remarked with a fond sigh when Zim pulled the receiver away. "What IS she playing though?"
"Oh, just a virtual reality simulator based on a really old game. Meteors? Asteroids? Something like that," Zim answered, shrugging to himself
"I know the one. And the space crabs?" Membrane questioned idly.
"Had to make it interesting somehow," Zim answered.
"Fair enough. Try to get her home by ten AM, or twenty-two hundred if you prefer," Membrane offered in amusement.
"If she tries to fight me, I can only promise by midnight," Zim forewarned in total seriousness.
"And I believe you. Good luck, and see you tomorrow at the lab!" Membrane said in farewell.
"We might actually need it," Zim murmured as his Pak put the device away before he opened the line to his human again. "Gazling, return to the ship! I can't have you using up the entire charge before we get to the massive."
"Yeah, Zim? Need a little help," Gaz requested over the line.
"What happened?" Zim deadpanned. "If you damaged that suit, I'm not letting you out in space again for a year!"
"Earth or Irken year?" Gaz returned with a smirk.
"YES!"
"Relax, I just found a hole in one of the bigger space rocks. Turns out there's a maze of small tunnels in here. Mind shining a light for me?" Gaz requested.
Zim stared at the speaker with a raised eyebrow. "You know there might have been space creatures in there, right?"
"Those a thing too? Things actually living in the vacuum of space?" Gaz asked curiously.
"Yes, and Zim will never comprehend how your kind came to assume otherwise. Now stay still while Zim probes your holes."
"Oh come on! That wasn't even sub-!" Gaz yelled before Zim cut the feed.
Meanwhile
"What a responsible young man," Professor Membrane stated pleasantly as he turned back to the matter at hands. "Ahh yes, Millers. Where were we?"
"Sir," the head of Security for Membrane Labs responded, motioning to the one-way mirror, showing a man in a black suit strapped down to a metal chair. "This is the leader of the men who kidnapped you. He's not cracking, I'm afraid, and all their equipment was either untraceable or stuff anyone can buy, along with some stolen Military gear. So far, no leads."
"What about the others?" Membrane inquired curiously.
Millers just shook his head with a grunt. "Some of them are claiming amnesia, and others just keep raving about some kind of midget monster. The rest won't say anything. Most of them that we can identify are relatively low level criminals and ex-military, all known for doing mercenary work of some kind."
"Clever. They used mostly generic cannon fodder that wouldn't trace back to them. I'm sure the ones we can't identify as criminals and such are the only ones that know who the real employers behind this are," Membrane speculated.
"What makes you think that, Professor?" Millers questioned with a scowl.
"It's what I would do," Membrane answered honestly. "I don't think they expected to succeed."
"Then what was the point of this?" Millers wondered with a head tilt. "Ruin the peace day event?"
"That was likely just an excuse, a cover, or there would have been more attempts on the day itself. No, I think they merely wished to see how far they would get," Membrane mused before chuckling. "Pity I mistook that stop they made as being the destination. They might have led me right to the ones behind this," Membrane lied through his teeth expertly.
"Right. What shall we do with them?" Millers asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Standard procedure for most of them: wipe their minds of their time here, hand them over to the police, and see which ones end up "mysteriously" dead, missing, or exonerated. Keep the leader and the ones we can't identify. Scrubbing one's history and existence is hard and rarely as thorough as the scrubbers would like to believe," Membrane ordered, nodding to his head of security before heading out of the room.
And as the smartest human on the planet went through the bowels of his company, he mentally ran through a list of everyone that could pull off an operation like this and filtered it through everyone that would be willing and wanting to attempt it. That eliminated almost all their agencies. The ones that hated him lacked the resources, and those with the resources didn't hate him- some even depended on him.
Italy and Spain might be possibilities. They were always sponsoring his rivals, but the people in those countries liked him too much right now and their politicians were too cowardly to risk that kind of blowback.
There were several factions in India that had gone rogue, so who knew what was really going on with them, but it was hard for them to keep anything secret if they were working out of India.
The Zanj Union of Madagascar had the resources to at least try it these days, but they would have just tried to kill him outright, so they were off the list.
The list of private individuals and rival companies was much larger. The vehicle industry giant Brexank had been trying to kidnap him for decades, Inot Starch wanted to force him into helping create a superfood that might possibly destroy world hunger, and the list of still-wealthy people- or family thereof- whose companies and legacies were destroyed trying to take on his company was just short of the triple digits.
Of course, he only needed one clue to filter it all down to one: He just had to get one of the assailants to spill what their employers wanted him to do.
Meanwhile
The world was on fire; No, not the world, a world.
A world of white grass and red stones, a city of buildings in the shape of hollowed, spiraling cones with many-fold triangular hallways within them. Strange aliens ran for their lives. Their skin was blue and green, rippling like the surface of water. Their ships were like their buildings, their wreckages littering the countryside as hordes of technological war machines and highly advanced soldiers of all sizes demolished the city and butchered the people.
Some tried to flee for their lives, and the lives of their loved ones, their children. But as a family tried to make it across the burning, albino fields, they met their deaths. And their death was herself. She was a tall and merciless creature of war, with hair of violets and curved armor that seemed tighter than skin tight. As if...as if part of it was also part of her, integrated into her being. And as she looked upon them with her eyes, one a dark hazel and the other a glowing red lens, she gunned them down. All of them. The father, the mother and the child.
Their corpses were taken by the flames before they even fell, ashes in the wind of war and victory. But she paid it no mind. Instead, she turned her gaze off to the side, peering up at a hill. Beyond it further, in the great distance were two shadowy silhouettes: one bulky, the other slender, but both were winged and both were behemoths that might scrape the sky.
But on the hill itself was her true target, staring down at her with two red orbs and a zipper tooth smile as he stood there, his blood red cloak swaying in the soot rich wind to proudly show the symbol of his people. And in his sword was a blade of pure, violet energy in the shape of a katana.
Behind him were all the horrors of War and Hell, leaping to his command and cheering on his champion. But she only truly heard his voice. For it was in her mind, clear as day. His tone was pleased, powerful, victorious, and sadistic. "Well done, My Slave."
She fell to one knee, bowing her head in thanks before giving her own response muted with the smile hidden from the cosmos. "Thank you...Master."
Gaz blinked awake, sitting up in an instant. "Well, took you long enough, Gaz-slave," Zim commented with a chuckle as he piloted the voot cruiser through space.
"Zim?" Gaz addressed evenly, scowling through a small blush.
"Yes?"
"Why am I sitting in your lap?" Gaz inquired with her arms folded.
"I believe most humans let their pets lay on their laps," Zim countered, chuckling when she didn't dignify that with a response. "But in honesty, you were starting to drool sitting on your side like that."
"Wha-I do NOT drool in my sleep," Gaz retorted, glaring over her shoulder at him.
"Well, you did this time," Zim informed bluntly. "Besides, you wouldn't have needed a nap if you hadn't begged Zim to let you try out the Slave Collar's upgrades via asteroid blasting."
"I didn't beg for anything, Zim," Gaz stated with an eye roll, not denying the other point.
"Yes you did, Gazling, yes you did," Zim insisted with a hint of smugness, grinning in delight at the supposed memory.
"Your memory has a glitch," Gaz returned insistently. "If anything, you were begging ME to try it on for you!"
"Zim begs no one! It is you with the faulty recollection, Gazling!" Zim continued with a snicker. "And Zim has the recording to prove it~"
Gaz raised an eyebrow at the claim. "You really want to try that?" she questioned skeptically.
"Shall Zim replay it?" Zim challenged with a smooth smirk.
"Are you sure you want to burst your own bubble?" Gaz asked, a bit of confusion in her challenging tone.
"Zim shall love to pop your bubble, Gaz-slave," Zim countered confidently.
Gaz went still at that, her face going crimson at that innuendo.
"Moose have your tongue?" Zim prompted playfully. Before their exchange could continue, a beeping rang through the ship. "Ahh, saved by the klaxon, my pet. We're here!"
Fighting away her embarrassment, Gaz looked around with a curious frown. "Here, where? I don't see anything."
Zim, in answer, used the controls to turn the ship upside down. Relative to its previous position, anyway, as the artificial gravity kept them from being displaced from their seats.
"Oh. Questioned retracted," Gaz said as she looked down at, if she was right, the top of an enormous spaceship, surrounded by more moderate sized ships and then a great many that appeared like insects to it. Realizing the smallest were the Voot Cruisers, and she could only barely see them as like tiny misquitos in comparison spoke volumes to the size of the megastructure. "So that's the Irken Armada."
"Yep," Zim answered, voice filled with patriotic pride.
"Most powerful military force in the known universe," she continued.
"Yep," Zim repeated.
"And we're going to just waltz into their flagship?" she questioned skeptically.
"Yeah, No," Zim stated, leaning back with a knowing smile.
"No?" Gaz asked, looking to him oddly. "Isn't that why we came out here?
"No, Gazling. You were right the first time about why we are here," Zim answered with a smirk as he held up her slave collar and tossed it to her.
"Meaning?" Gaz prompted, catching the mark of ownership. Her dream-self flashed before her eyes for a split second, but she made no outward reaction to it.
Zim waited as he watched her put the collar on, smiling briefly as he saw something she hadn't noticed yet: something engraved into the metal.
"We're going to crash the meeting."
Meanwhile
Irkens preferred things to have curved and circular surfaces instead of straight and flat lines. Once one thought with that in mind, most of their technology and architecture made a lot more sense in appearance.
Tallest Purple and Tallest Red looked down from the railing of the walkway, giving them a clear view of the ovular shaped room, often used for training and testing new equipment. Now it was filled with eighteen Irkens, standing at attention in three rows of six. Or, what had been Irkens, or what Irkens should be. It was a very confusing topic to Purple, and even Red wasn't sure how to classify these individuals relative to normal irkens.
"My fellow Irkens!" Red addressed, the group briefly waving their antennae as a respectful greeting. "As you have all been made aware, you all represent the successful possibility that, if the Empire might one day find our Paks useless, the Irken race can and will assuredly survive such an ordeal."
"You're also all taller, better, and get your own new set of arms!" Purple declared with a dreamy look upwards. "Ahh, I could eat so many donuts with four arms."
To their credit, the one and a half dozen Irkens didn't even flinch at Purple's immaturity, Red just clearing his throat to retake the speech. "Yes, that too. Several of you have also undergone unique metamorphosis that the good doctor, whom you've all become familiar with, has indicated to be stable and safe," he added on, waving to said doctor, her coat still covering her hoverpad. She nodded in answer before turning back to her datapad.
"You were all chosen at random back in the tubes for this experiment," Purple continued, allowing himself to be mostly serious for this. "While a great many of your would-be peers perished in Impending Doom I, most of you are soldiers, with a surprising amount of you having become Elites and even Invaders. Though, some of you come from..." he paused, as he considered his wording. "Less than impressive backgrounds."
"Which, honestly, we don't care about," Red assured flippantly. "This is a fresh start for all of you. Because not only are you a dawn of a new kind of Irken, but also the return of an old class. You eighteen-"
"Nineteen."
"Nineteen-wait, what?" Red stopped, looking to the doctor in surprise.
The Irken scientist perked up in surprise, looking very sheepish behind the collar of her coat. "Sorry, my Tallests! I've just gotten very used to correcting you on the matters of the Reversion project, it just came out automatically," she apologized in embarrassment.
Red looked at her oddly. "Doc, there's only eighteen of them," he pointed out, motioning to the room of modified Irkens, who were all also looking mildly confused.
The doctor blinked as she realized he was, technically, correct. "Umm, my Tallests? You remember how my equipment detects the Modies if they are nearby? Because my instruments say there are nineteen of them."
"Could it just be a double reading? I mean, Lud can count for at least two of them," Purple suggested, pointing one of his two fingers at a wide and heavily muscled mod-Irken, who saluted at being addressed.
"No, Sir, I've checked and I just rechecked," she countered with a curious look. "There's a nineteenth Mody on the Mass-"
She stopped as her pad made a loud, annoying ping. "What Is That?" Purple asked in annoyance over the noise before the doctor shut it off.
"That's...peculiar. They just left the Massive, apparently?" the female Irken informed in confusion.
"We did make sure none on the crew were Modies, right?" Purple questioned curiously.
"I think we would have heard something about one of our crew suddenly going into a disgusting and extended hibernation," Red retorted with an eye roll. "Look, Doc, after the meeting is over, just go talk to the security division and ask them who left aroun-"
The Tallests were both growing increasingly annoyed as another, rapid beeping came from her device. "I very much want to break that now," Purple deadpanned, antennae twitching in annoyance.
"I have spares, my Tall-" the doctor started automatically before her own antennae went high in alarm. "And now it's returning. Very, very rapidly."
Purple wasn't the smartest, but he had been Tallest long enough to guess what came next. Sharing an alarmed look with his co-ruler, they both said the same thing; "Oh, Tarki."
This was the precise moment the entire room shook with a thunderous bang.
"What the kriff!? Patch me to the bridge!" Red demanded as he held himself up, the violet hologram of an Irken elite appearing near. "Navigator Slarb, what's happening!?" Red questioned with a glare.
"Sir! A lone Voot Cruiser suddenly went rogue and attacked us, and the pilot isn't answering any of our hails!" Slarb answered dutifully. "The hull was breached-"
"What?! How can a single Voot put a hole in the Massive?" Purple asked in shock, Red not disagreeing with him.
"Unclear, my Tallest. The breach has been sealed by the countermeasures, whoever did this is inside the Massive's outer shell and will breach into a room any moment," Slarb explained.
"Which roo-" Purple started, only for Red to raise his hand and shush him.
"Deh, deh! Purple, don't even ask," Red instructed with a knowing scowl, glaring towards the furthest wall. "He's here."
As if summoned, a large drilling device burst through the wall. Immediately, the Irkens sprang into action. Eight of them jumped up to the catwalks while the others took up readied stances as they watched the intrusive vehicle's drill fold away into itself, revealing a voot cruise that had lodged itself into the gap.
"My Tallests, Doctor, you should leave," a female Mody Irken implored.
"I shall have all available soldiers there immediately, My Tallests!" Slarb assured urgently, about to turn away.
"Cancel that!" Red all but shouted, even as Purple looked nervous and alarmed at this development. The Irkens all looks to him in confusion. Except one. The only one he was looking at.
The doctor was staring intently at the intruding ship, not a hint of surprise in her body language. She glanced over she when caught his look, and after a brief instance of holding the gaze of the Tallest, she gave a firm and steady nod.
In response, Red groaned. "I know who it is. Slarb, just tell everyone it's an over eager soldier," he ordered, dismissing the hologram of a very confused navigator.
"What? You know? Who?" Purple asked in alarm.
"Who else?" Red asked with a scowl, just before the glass of the voot cruiser was ejected off.
From the cockpit rose a different yet eerily familiar figure for all to see. "Oh no," Purple whispered in dread.
"Is that who I think it is?" one of the Modies asked uneasily.
"Oh yeah, no mistaking that smugness," another whispered through gritted teeth.
"He's one of us," the female Mody next to Red noted calmly.
"I'm back, Kriffers!" Zim declared, all four arms held proudly high as he leapt down, landing nearly halfway across the room. "Helllllllllo, my Tallests! Did you miss me?" he called up with a grin.
"Zim," Red acknowledged with a deadpan even as Purple looked faint. "What are you even doing here?"
"Oh, I heard about this party of freaks, and realized my invitation must have been lost in the mail," Zim answered playfully, pausing in his stride to flex out one of his multi-jointed legs for effect. In doing so, he caught sight of the third non-modified Irken in the room. "Ahh, and this must be the good doctor responsible for all this."
"Invader Zim," the doctor greeted with a nod. "I was beginning to think you wouldn't show."
"You knew? She knew?" Purple asked in shock, murmurs going amongst the other Irkens.
"Of course she knew," Red answered, giving the scientist a stink eye.
"Oh, don't be too harsh with her, My Tallests. After all, I thought it best to keep my...condition unknown until I knew it wasn't a deformity," Zim explained smoothly as he resumed his march forward.
"You disabled your Pak's feed?!" Red asked in outrage.
"Yes," Zim answered bluntly, a wicked smirk on his face. "After all, if you just so happened to have found out that I was undergoing unusual changes before you knew it was part of...whatever this is, I'm sure you might have made a quick judgement to have me declared defective or something like that."
Red blinked at that. "Did you just hold a grudge?" he asked in surprise.
"Maybe a little," Zim answered in amusement.
"That's far enough," one of the Irkens declared, one of his robotic limbs extending from his Pak with a laser mounted on it.
Zim paused, eyeing the Irken curiously "Elite Zon," he recognized, smiling coyly when said Irken stiffened. "I remember you from Elite training. You were a horrible shot," he recalled confidently.
"Enough!" Red called out, glaring down at the formerly tiny Irken. "Zim, what plagued your Pak to think penetrating the Massive was a remotely good idea?!"
"Because, My Tallests, you wouldn't have let Zim aboard otherwise," Zim answered, completely factual as he eyed his fellow Modies. "Despite how, you know, I'm obviously supposed to be here."
"And why wouldn't we just blow you up? Or throw you out of a cannon?" Purple asked, reasonably calmer now.
"Because you haven't already?" Zim pointed out, far too calmly to be sane. "And it's not like I killed anyone or did any real damage to the ship. I knew what I was doing."
"I find that hard to believe," Red grumbled.
"My Tallests," the Doctor spoke up. "My apologies for not informing you about Invader Zim being part of the project. To be frank, I thought he was either dead or a dud after his Pak failed to communicate any of the results of the modifications taking place."
"We should be so lucky," another modified remarked.
"Invader Chin. Slowest reaction time in Invader history, or that was the joke," Zim remarked without even looking at the speaker, who looked taken back and then angered by the jab.
"But I believe that, for the sake of the project, we should allow him to stay," the doctor recommended.
The Tallests of the Irken Empire shared a look at that. "Doc, come over here for a second, please," Red requested, the three huddling to one side. "Doc, your project may or may not have produced ZIM! That puts the entire thing in doubt," he whispered with a glare.
Down below, Zim watched the exchange calmly, looking around at the other reverted Irkens either glaring at him or giving him uncertain looks. He hummed as he recognized a surprising face. "Stank! You're Stink's brother, aren't you? You make Invader yet?" Zim asked with a genuine smile.
"Umm, no? I've been in the Elites since the reconstruction on Irk after Impending Doom I was completed," Stank answered uneasily, smiling nonetheless.
"And just like that, you've contributed more than Spladoot," Zim remarked with a grin.
"What did I do?!" Spladoot asked in indignation from the rear.
"I can feel you pretending to shoot my Pak," Zim counterered with a snort.
"Gah! Fine!" Red shouted as the three returned to the rails. "Zim, you're allowed to stay. Unfortunately, we already decided that ALL modified get a fresh start, which, technically we have to extend to you."
"Thank you, My Tallest, you shall not regret this!" Zim promised.
"We doubt that," Purple stated, almost sounding depressed, before smirking as he continued. "But, for breaking into the Massive, causing Irk only knows how much moonies in a new paint job, and seeing as you've missed out on all the other meetings-"
"Other meetings?" Zim repeated with a scowl. "Forgive me, My Tallests, but how long has everyone been awake? I only finished my coma a while ago."
"If you had received the proper updates in response to your transformations, you would have been up after just one month, maybe a third of another," the doctor explained with her own bit of annoyance.
"Ahh. Continue please Tallest Purple?" Zim requested.
Purple rolled his eyes at that. "Zim, long and short? Your punishment is having to take on the rest of the Modies."
A great many of the Irkens smirked viciously...until they saw Zim's grin. "Punishment? My, I have to say, that's a nice welcome back present, My Tallests!" he declared as he suddenly jumped back across the room in two great leaps. Now with distance between him and the group, he cracked his neck. "Who wants the first taste of Zim?"
End of Chapter
Hello, people and welcome to 2020 with my first update of the year!
So, yeah, Membrane is narrowing down his list of suspects, and Zim crashed the Mod Meeting...and now he has to fight all of eighteen of them. The fight probably won't go how any of you suspect, but it will be fun. And more ZaG moments. XP
Also, an anonymous reviewer figured out by the numbers I already have that Irk has 40 months- or at least it does by the system I made up for them. XP
Hope you all enjoyed this and check out the Tv Trope page!
PS My beta, aka my long time friend and the guy who cleans up my grammar and spell, is going through some stuff with his grandmother having...problems that might be fatal. I won't say what, its not my story to tell, but keep him and his family in your thoughts and prayers.
PPS I will within a weeks time, I will be publish my own original work on my pat-reon, barring RL distaster of some sort.