Gaz seemed to be in a good place. With Iran no longer under the Shah Hokkatoiya Cockammamie's control, the USA was currently occupying it along with NATO to provide a certain level of stability until they had elections and chose their own leader. She couldn't stop smiling as she sat with pride in what had been her mom's old home in Iran, the wind blowing though a blown-open chunk of ceiling to make her hair slightly sweep about. But despite the clear bullet holes and what was obviously a remnant from an explosion caused by some kind of IED, Gaz was chilling it up, pouring herself a mimosa.
"Should you be drinking before it's even nine in the morning?" Dib asked as Gaz smirked and just downed her cup in a single gulp.
"It's nine o'clock somewhere." She wisecracked before she moved onto the bagels, buttering hers up with LOADS of butter, practically sloughing it on as Dib munched on his own. "This is nice." She sighed blissfully. "Can you hear that outside?"
"Besides the wind, no, I don't hear anything."
"EXACTLY." Gaz proudly proclaimed. "No bombs going off. No bullets soaring through the air. No yelling or screaming. Just…silence." She took in a deep breath and then went "Ahhhh" as she poured herself ANOTHER mimosa. Across the table, a muscular arm extended out and offered a cup to Dib.
"…n-no thank you. I'll stick with the hot chocolate." Dib nervously murmured.
The Huntsman was very similar to his sister. Neh-Buh-Loh had a well-built, powerful, starry-bodied body that made you think of deep space, but while Nee had nice wrist bracelets, Neh only had a single necklace of beautiful gems around his neck. He had three embedded crystals in his head, and his eyes were a soft bluish/white color. He had no horns atop his forehead the way Nee-Buh-Loh did, and his voice was deeper and more authoritative. He shrugged slightly and poured himself a mimosa, sipping it lightly as his sister chatted it up with him.
"So, anyway, he's got this gun to the woman's head, he's grabbing her hair with his other hand, but then I give him a shoulder wound with my arrow. Shoulder wounds are REALLY effective, they hurt incredibly hard, more so than a wound to an arm or leg or stomach, it's the combination of bone and nerves, so he shrieks and his grip is gone, and then POW. His head is gone, and I'm grabbing his leg and using him as a hammer on the other goons he's got in that room…"
Nee had been diving full-heartedly into detailing the way she'd "disarmed" the shah, as it were. The Huntsman chuckled softly, then nodded appreciatively at Dib and Gaz.
"I appreciate what you've done for my sister. She hasn't been this happy in years." The Huntsman admitted. "She's needed a pick me up, since this week was the anniversary of our own parent's passing." He quietly added as Nee nodded softly, holding up her own cup. She clinked it to her brother's as Dib raised an eyebrow up.
"I don't think you've ever told me about your parents." Dib confessed. "How did they die?"
"Our planet was put under a quarantine. The aliens that did it thought they were doing us a favor, they didn't like that our species kept indulging in eating other sentient beings all the time. So they figured if they put a quarantine up and kept our race from leaving, we'd have to change our ways, either by coming up with alternatives to eating folks or by asking for outside help. INSTEAD…we all turned on each other." The Huntsman groaned. "I know they thought they were being kind but…what they did killed us. That's…that's how we lost our parents." He mumbled. "Nee had been the only one off-planet at the time. And I…I was the last survivor ON the planet because my parents locked me in a bunker with food to keep me safe."
"It's funny…" Nee quietly laughed, but there was no humor to it. "Mom always said "be prepared for everything"…and they were. In the worst way possible…" She trailed off as she hung her head and quietly clasped her hands together. She bit into her lip as the Huntsman gently put a hand on his sister's shoulder, his claws gently holding her firm. "…you two kids are lucky. You at least get to keep your dad…and your world."
"I guess we should count our blessings, then. I mean…we've had a pretty darn good life, all things considered." Dib reasoned as he held a hand up. "You know what? I think I WILL take a mimosa." He asked the Huntsman, who poured him a cup. One by one, they all held their cups up, and clinked them against one another."What should we toast to?"
"How about just being…happily drunk with some friends?" The Huntress suggested. "Could we do that?"
"To being happily drunk." Dib agreed.
"To being happily drunk!" The Huntsman proclaimed.
"A couple more of these fine drinks and I WILL be "happily drunk"…" Gaz said as she hiccupped a little. "I must be made of sterner stuff, I barely feel a BUZZ!" She laughed as everyone around the table chuckled.
The next few days, sovereignty had been fully handed over to the interim government of Iran, coincidentally on the same day that the Iranians were celebrating the death of the shah and their apparent freedom. They'd decided to do the parade in the afternoon, when the heat was down to a more tolerable, oh, say…112 degrees.
So naturally, Gaz and Dib and the others in the US delegation were enjoying the parade as they watched the Iran families cheering and hooting and hollering.
"So where did this marching band at the front come from?" The head of the NATO delegation inquired as she stood alongside her guard, a few of the other NATO officials scratching their heads at seeing high school kids in marching band attire blowing horns and banging drums and the like, and all sweating like diseased yaks in the intense heat of the Iranian afternoon.
"Well, they're actually from OUR high school. I talked to the superintendent of the district and cleared it. Turns out we were chosen to be the sister city of Tehran YEARS ago. Philadelphia wasn't getting much out of the relationship, admittedly. Apparently thanks to some stupid snafu in congress we actually had some Iran-related SANCTIONS on us! Can you believe it? What, did they think the shah was gonna smuggle stuff to Iran from OUR crappy city?" Gaz snorted. "Thank FUCK that's over."
"The kids are pretty talented." The NATO delegation head admitted before-
KRAKKA-KOOOM! Some mortar fire rang out from the depths of the city. People nervously turned to look back at it, their faces slightly darkening, eyes nervously flitting from the city to one another as the marching band, though poised, turned up the rhythm and began walking more quickly. The next float was a VERY cheery bunch of rebels who were rather excitedly firing off guns into the air, whooping and hollering, while on a paper mache float that showed-
"Oh, look, it's me!" The Huntress beamed with pride. "They're so talented! That's me managing to get my entire fist down his throat when I pulled his-" She began to say before Dib had to cover his mouth, barely avoiding vomiting over his fingers.
"Ah, the taste of freedom." Gaz wisecracked evilly. "But they really should be more careful, I mean, the bullets are gonna come down eventually-"
"That's why they're not firing straight up." Dib moaned as he steadied himself on the Huntsman, who gently patted his head as the next float came by. Oh, this one would be great for the kiddies, it was an enormous float of TINTIN of all people, by Georges Remi, aka "Herge". Apparently the people of the Middle East actually loved Tintin's adventures. Evidently his comics portrayed them, according to the recently elected interim president, "better than 90% of most western media". Well…when your alternative was stuff like Frank Miller drawing a Batman stand-in who's response to a terrorist screaming "JIHAAAAD" was to go "Gesundheit" before kicking the would-be suicide bomber off a roof...well, it was a low damn bar.
There was also a cute little float of "Aggretsuko", the Japanese anime of a salary woman red panda who screamed out her frustrations at the world in death metal. Evidently they really liked her too. She was 70 feet long and 40 feet high and filled with hundreds of cubic yards of helium-
POW!
"Oh, for…" Gaz groaned. Some jokester had shot Retsuko and now her beautiful head was deflating. Oh, the humanity! She rolled her eyes as a bunch of kids in the crowd began to whine and complain.
"Mommy, where's Retsuko's head?" One of them asked in Persian as Dib tried not to laugh, the float collapsing on top of the Tintin float, now looking like it was a red panda cape! How degrading! And worst of all it was leaking helium as it passed-
"The good news is that it won't be difficult for the parents to explain what happened to Retsuko's head." Gaz squeaked out as Dib giggled and guffawed.
"P-Proba-probably n-not!" He managed to get out before he began to sing the Munchkin Land song. "We welcome you to Munchkin Land! Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-laaaaa!" He proclaimed as Gaz began to guffaw and laugh too as the next float came around, displaying the beautiful Kurdish float. It was led by a bunch of trucks, and it was filled with ornate flowers and finely carved GLASS flowers to boot, whilst a woman was singing an anthem in the middle. The thing was the Kurdish guards that were on the float did keep casting very nasty looks at the interim government representatives that stood by Gaz, Dib and the other delegations.
The next float belonged to the honorary grand marshal of the float to do a performance herself. Gaz had paid good money to fly her here, and so now the whole parade would be able to enjoy Gwen Stefani teaming up with her old bandmates of No Doubt, and folks were calling out their favorites, hoping the group would pick one.
"Don't Speak!"
"Hey Baby!"
"It's My Life!"
But today, they were going with "Just A Girl", Gaz sighing in blissful delight. "Nothing like some classic ska rock." She proclaimed. "Music to my ears."
BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA. They turned back to look at the city. More gunfire. Dib frowned nervously. "…are we sure we totally had the shah's army dismantled?"
"Oh, believe me, we had ALL their guns and pistols and everything else taken from them." Gaz remarked. "I wasn't going to have this turned into a repeat of Iraq." She insisted firmly as she shook her head back and forth. "We're better prepared."
…
…
…
…it's been said no plan survives contact with the enemy. Tragically, in this case, the enemy was the turbulent nature of the region. Even with the shah gone, and an interim government trying to step in, regional in-fighting began when IRAQ tried to make a power play and attempted to invade. They had, in fact, sent in rebels earlier to do an assassination attempt upon the shah, only to find him already deposed.
As they fought with the coalition forces that NATO and the USA had set up, more inter-cultural squabbles turned violent. Chaos began to unfold when medical and food relief efforts were stymied due to the roads being destroyed in massive battles with what had been left of the shah's loyalists, who'd managed to hold onto a few TANKS.
With their forces divided with the loyalists and the Iraqi forces, the peacekeepers couldn't hold back the in-fighting between Kurdish groups, Shia groups, Sunni groups, all jockeying for power. Worse still, assassinations hit the interim government.
Downtown Tehran was turning into a war zone. Conflict began to be drawn across ethnic lines as over 50,000 people died in the first week of what would be called the Middle East Massacre, most of them women and children.
With suicide bombings on the rise, medical aid groups and humanitarian groups began to pull out in fear for their own people's lives…and Gaz?
Gaz was devastated. She sat, not saying anything, in her room back at her home. She barely blinked and just clutched her knees. Dib nervously knocked on the door to her room, slowly opening it, trying to summon the words to speak.
"…Gaz? Can…can we talk?"
Gaz didn't say anything. She just briefly flicked her head in his direction.
Dib bit his lip as he struggled to find the right words to try and comfort her, noticing her phone was on and tossed off her bed, the screen currently on the latest casualty figures in the regional war in Iran. "Gaz, I just want you to know, I…I was really proud of you when you said you wanted to try and help the country of Iran. I used to think you were really selfish, and I was so happy that you proved me wrong."
"…they're going to remember me for this." Gaz muttered. "…in all the worst ways. I did this. Me." She managed to mumble out as she flopped back on her bed and stared almost absentmindedly up at the ceiling. It was as if she was seeing everything and nothing at all. "…pretty pathetic…huh."
"There's no way you could have known it'd work out like this." Dib offered. "…look, how about we go out and get some Bloaty's Pizza? My treat."
"…I'm not hungry." Gaz said as she turned on her side and slightly curled up.
"…but you're always up for Bloaty's. Come on. I'll take us out to ice cream afteeeer?" Dib added hopefully as he held up his wallet and jiggled it around. Then Gaz's next words stopped him cold.
"Mom's old house got blown up. ICBM strike. It missed its target and hit the house instead."
Dib slunk out of her room, leaving Gaz alone, feeling a dark pit in the bottom of his own stomach as he trudged down the stairs. His father was holding a microscope to the Huntsman's arm as he sat on the couch, next to his sister, as they watched the news coverage that was diving into the latest assault by Iraq upon Iran.
"Looks like things didn't work out so well." Nee mumbled. "Is your sister-"
"No." He mumbled. "She's not. I think she needs to be left alone for a little while…and so do I, okay?" He said as Nee nodded in understanding, Dib sticking his hands in his jacket pockets and trudging off. He knew where he was going. He had to see Zim. How far was the alien along with his Florpus project?
As it turned out, Zim was basically almost finished. He smirked as Dib walked into his laboratory, turning around on his rotating chair, and gesturing with a black, gloved hand. "BEHOLD!" Zim proclaimed as he showed off something on a pedestal…a little remote with a shiny red button. "With the aid of that blood you provided for me from the Huntress, I've been able to craft what I call…the PORT-A-PORTAL! One click of that button and THWOOSH! She'll be right to the center of the Florpus Hole!" he proclaimed.
"So she'll get teleported into it?" Dib asked.
"Well, um…no." Zim shook his head. "See, the thing is, it…it will come to HER."
Dib angrily tore at his hair. "ZIIIIIM! You are NOT bringing another Florpus Hole to Earth!" He angrily yelled.
"Well what am I supposed to do, I can't have it done on the moon. I promised that to GIR." Zim reasoned with a shrug.
Dib paced back and forth. "UGH. Fine. There has to be somewhere private away from Earth we can lure her to." He mumbled. "Like…okay. I've got it. Pluto. Nobody's using Pluto right now." He suggested. "And cuz it's so far away from Earth we'll be just fine. No way we'll get collateral!" He proclaimed as he slammed his fist into his palm.
"Fine! Pluto it shall be. Getting her there will be YOUR job." Zim added as he handed Dib the remote. "Zim's done all he can! Well…done all he felt like doing. Same thing."
Indeed, now came the hard part. Thinking of a way to get the Huntress there…and he'd PROBABLY have to do the same to her brother. After all, once Neh-Buh-Loh figured out his sister was gone he'd tear the Earth apart. The smart thing to do would be to get them both at the same time. The issue would be HOW to lure them there. He couldn't exactly just argue "I want you to teach me how to do archery", that could be done almost anywhere on Earth far away from people.
Perhaps though, he could appeal to pure, raw destruction. He could make an argue to ignore the moon since any would-be destruction of that would hurt the Earth due to its proximity, but a more far-off-planet being destroyed in a huge, big,show-offy way…THAT could work!
Dib didn't see Gaz when he returned home. In fact she kept going out of her way to avoid him. He tried to call her, but she wouldn't take his calls. He tried to text her, and she didn't respond. She wasn't even talking much to her father, when Dib would ask Professor Membrane if Gaz had been up to anything, Professor Membrane confessed Gaz was almost ghosting HIM too, just saying she was "busy in Washington".
A week later, Dib was on his way home, having done a new interview with NASA. He'd managed to sneak in during said interview a suggestion that he wanted to personally lead an observation team to Pluto, to see the full extent of the two Cosmo Sapiens's powers when they didn't have to hold back at all. Now that he'd said it on TV, neither the Huntsman nor the Huntress seemed keen on refusing. Even with all their power, it seemed social pressure still effected them the way it did humans.
"I mean, you don't HAVE to do it. It's cool if you don't. And I mean, if you CAN'T, that's fine…" Dib had added when the two had been about to give THEIR part of the interview. They'd glanced at one another, the Huntress looking slightly irritated, the Huntsman looking mildly amused. Just a little bit of psychology for a final push, that was all it took.
"Alright…fine." The Huntsman sighed. "We can show off a little for you. For the sake of science." He remarked as he threw his hands up, the Huntress shrugging.
"Yeah, I guess we can spare a little time and go a LITTLE wild. I admit, even when I was doing work in Iran I was still holding back quite a lot, it WOULD be fun to really go crazy and let loose somewhere." She added.
"Great! How's next week work for you two?"
"We've got it free after an interview on that show…what was it called? "The Daily Show"?"
Indeed, the Daily Show writers actually had a skit in mind, they wanted to, for comedic effect, be pulling out ludicrous things which also tangentially related to the current political climate from the two Cosmo Sapiens in the name of illustrating a biting satirical point about the current status quo. For example, when discussing the latest tax reform bill in congress, the Huntsman would then pull out a literal bull from himself to make it clear what the show REALLY thought of how effective it'd be in simplifying the tax code. Then when they got to the bit about the immigration bill they'd do a funny "Magician's kerchief" joke where the Huntress would keep tugging stuff out from her chest. Not a rainbow-colored handkerchief, no. This time it would be a solid string of dollar bills to indicate how much money would be WASTED on the bill that had been proposed, and they would still be pulling the bills out before they cut to commercial!
It was gonna be great. Dib made his way out of the building and was walking down the sidewalk, headed home when his phone vibrated. He took it out and stared, looking stunned at what was on display. It was a news report and Dib gaped at the sight. It was horrible. The USA had sent in full military forces to try and forcibly expel the Iraqi forces and, well…it had been a horrible slaughter. A lot of innocent civilians had been caught in the crossfire. The video footage being captured was positively horrifying, Dib cringing in disgust and shaking his head back and forth-
Wait. WAIT. He stared in shock. There was a video of the person leading the current United States peacekeeping forces and…and it was Gaz. She was all decked up a thick dark vest, helmet, belt loaded up with various bullets and grenades. "We need to show a real shock and awe campaign to force the Iraqis out. Violence is clearly the only thing they respect, since they've showed a disgusting lack of concern for basic fucking democracy!" She told the interviewer.
There was a terrifying cold fire in her eyes now and Dib shuddered. He knew that look. It was the kind of look Gaz had when she wanted to sick her flesh-eating dolls on you. And knowing Gaz she'd probably PACKED her flesh-eating-
Oh. Yep. She had. He could see them in a big suitcase as she continued the interview in Air Force One.
Well, shit. That wasn't good. What new spore of madness was she going to unleash upon the Middle East?
…
…
…
… "They're up to something."
The Huntsman had been hanging out with his sister as they relaxed on a hill that overlooked the ocean. The soft woosh of the waves against the beach lilted through the air as they nonchalantly munched on shark meat. A rather vicious, but stupid, hammerhead had tried to attack them when they'd been out for a swim and it had paid the ultimate price.
Surprisingly, shark did, in fact…taste rather like chicken. A mildly more sweet chicken at that. Learn something new every day!
"Yeah, I figured. They want us isolated and alone on that planet. I could practically SMELL the deception coming off of Dib." The Huntress sighed as she kept slow-roasting the cooked shark over the fire. They'd set up a very nice rotisserie to cook it, whilst the Huntsman had cut open a couple coconuts and they were drinking the milk from within it to wash the shark meat down with.
"What're we going to do?" He inquired.
"…we need to know exactly what he's got planning, and I think I know how we can find out. I smelled ZIM on him. The two have been hanging out recently, and Zim is not what you would call good at keeping secrets."
"So you intend to torture it out of him?" The Huntsman sounded a little disgusted with the idea.
"No. Ugh." The Huntress shook her head back and forth before she grinned. "I don't NEED to. He knows already what I could do to him, the mere threat alone will be plenty to make him talk."
"Good." The Huntsman nodded as he sipped on some coconut milk. "I really do prefer not to indulge in my…darker side." He added. "Especially not against somebody pathetic as Invader Zim."
"I had really grown to like the kid." The Huntress murmured as she rested her hands on her knees and sighed deeply, hanging her head. "…now it seems he's trying to kill us."
"I'm disappointed too. It would seem our very presence, our mere existence invokes such unfortunate fear in the other species." The Huntsman confessed. "It's such a shame. I was beginning to like being here. Compared to the other planets we've been on, nobody's tried to offer up their children to us for sacrifice or anything creepy like that. We're more…celebrities. It was refreshing."
"Yeah…it was nice, feeling…" The Huntress hesitated at the last word.
"…wanted."