The 401,278th Intergalactic Supremacy Pie Competition of DOOM!

Chapter 9: The Battle for Earth Part 2

"Six."

"Aw man, that's a bummer."

"Wh-!? It's more than a bummer! We have been raided SIX freaking times by the Resisty!"

"Mhm that's very interesting. What did they steal this time?" Purple looked over his shoulder, still obviously bored. He started counting how many munches it was taking to munch his Snackplanet.

"The Snackplanets. Every last one of them," Red punched the wall ineffectively, hurting his hand. Have you seen those Irken claws? They're so weak and tiny...

A dark look crossed Purple's face as he gazed down at the last Snackplanet the Irken Empire possessed, a grim reminder of Irk's heavy losses by only the second month of the Petty Wars. Of course, none of that entered Purple's mind.

"But I'm gonna be hungry later!" he seethed, flailing his arms ineffectively. Melodramatically, he got all up in Red's face and whispered, "I'm gonna be hungry later", before slapping Red and storming off.

The door shut behind Purple, or at least tried to before the Snackplanet trailing the Tallest knocked it down. A wire sputtered. The lights flickered creakily. Red gazed around the once-proud Tallests' chamber, and for the first time in his life felt heat on the back of his neck.

Little did he know the ICSAC, inspired by Resisty rhetoric passed around auspiciously amongst low-level Massive maintenance workers, had begun to revolt.

In the moment the air conditioners shuttered to a final halt, all Red could process was how quickly things had fallen apart. He vaguely remembered a bold declaration of war, shared with the useless, hedonist Proctors (Fourier asked for a sandwich one time in a tone that really upset Red). Ever since that day in the blistering desert heat and the even more oppressive rage of failure, constant attacks by the ever-expanding Resisty had brought the Massive to a dead halt. Why the hell wouldn't that former slave Lard Nar just sit still and be oppressed?

"Tall-y be damned," Red intoned darkly. "Who in this whole crummy universe has it worse than me?"

The ICSAC workers, for starters. The ones who worship poo especially.

Red kicked a box angrily, which turned out to be Purple's Swallow Box, which promptly swallowed the TV. Red wept.

"Lord Almighty." Professor Membrane liked to save exclamations of these kinds (references to the deity at the forefront of his feeble-minded race's outdated beliefs) for special occasions.

This was a special occasion.

The contraption looked kind of like a red-and-black hand with pointy, almost claw-like fingers and a light red, transparent orb for a palm. At first glance, the thing also looked immobile, and Membrane figured it was just a bunch of junk Dib cobbled together aimlessly, albeit strikingly.

Then the engine started. Then the professor found himself climbing, bewildered, into the cockpit with his son. "Back to Venus!" Dib hollered at a terrifying and immediately responsive computer interface. Back?!

Membrane was a man of science, but for a brief moment, hovering over the yellow planet with his son following a too-brief flight, he became a man of faith.

"Lord Almighty."

The stars fell, faster than they had before, or at least faster than Gaz had ever seen them. In the instant her father and stupid brother had taken off into the night sky, she ordered a pizza, and would not have emerged from the Membrane house at all if she hadn't had to answer the doorbell to retrieve it.

Not that she cared that much, She'd seen stars fall, both in real life, and, more importantly, in the video games Starfall and Starfall 2: Stars Faller. Still, they looked unnatural, even organized, in their descent.

Gaz shut the door. The fanged-hair youth threw the pizza on the island counter in the middle of the kitchen and gathered a 6-pack of Poop Cola from the fridge, hoping to wash out the taste of
gross family dinner. (Earthians do not worship poop the way the deranged ICSAC-ers do, but they did have a fondness for the Poop Cola mascot. Earthians often enslave themselves in product-gathering, hoping to receive pleasure in return for moneys. Earthians are very stupid.) Just as she was about to jump the pizza as a member of the Loverjumper race might jump a lover in a fit of passion, the stars fell far closer than they had any right to.

Gaz regained consciousness quickly, reflexes alert from years of gaming, to discover the gaping hole in the wall the star had left.

Only of course it wasn't a star.

In the middle of the street, a vast spaceship stretched skyward far above the meager suburban block. Fearsome dinosaur-like creatures emerged from its hull. The sound of screams and the scent of flames flooded the demolished Membrane household. The Valusian invasion of Earth had begun.

Gaz shrugged and turned back to her pizza.

But the Pizza was No More.

A guttural, animalistic howl throttled the sky. Cold but also somehow red-hot fury emanated from Gaz's tiny 8 year old body as she viciously mourned the Italian treat. The pie had been smooshed underneath one of the Kenga Runner's hulking support beams. As always happened in situations where junk food was stripped away from Gaz, the girl could feel the tremendous power of darkness welling inside of her.

I don't know exactly how or where Gaz gained dark powers or what Gaz is exactly. She's just scary. Don't piss her off.

"I swear by all that is holy and unholy, I will bring you to your fated ends," Gaz's eyes shone with what a fool would describe as God's light and a less foolish fool would describe as madness as blood vessels popped throughout her body. The girl's tiny arms gripped the support beam, snapped it effortlessly from the Runner, and broke it over her powerful shin, from which a dark spear shot heavenward.

The Kenga Runner grunted and rumbled at the loss of one of four of its terrestrial grips, falling even further onto Gaz's childhood home. Some say a flicker of sorrow passed through the not-quite-mortal creature's expression. But those guys are all dead now, so who knows.

Those guys that just were foretold to die died, ripped apart by jutting dark claws that overtook the demon child's fingers. The girl shot through the spaceship's hull, a clear vertical line of dark energy passing through it.

She landed twenty feet from the blast radius. One giant explosion and explosion onomatopoeia later, the Runner collapsed. Gaz levitated a Poop Cola from the couch with the remains of her dark strength before nonchalantly heading down the road for Bloaty's Pizza Hog, which is a restaurant, not a pig made out of pepperoni. Does pepperoni come from pig? Yes, most of the time.

Hundreds of Kenga Runners menaced the blocks on the way to Bloaty's, but Gaz paid them no heed, nor they her. The screams of innocents ricocheted up and down the gleaming metal ships. Gaz whistled the theme to Stars Faller.

But her whistling was cut short by a truly terrifying sight- Another support beam had fallen on her beloved chain restaurant, spearing a greasy lipped child through the stomach.

"S-s-save me..." he croaked. Gaz snatched the piece of pizza from his hand, and chewed slowly.

The pizza seemed to be largely untouched in the place. There was a lot left over from recently-fled customers, too. Gaz almost smiled, but then another dark thought crossed her mind. Sure the pizza was safe there, but what of the rest of the world? What if the Kenga Runners- the Valusians- exterminated pizza?

Gaz is mostly only motivated by pizza. Get it?

A peculiar sense of grief infected the girl. She turned up to the metal beast and sneered. Not about to go soft, Gaz's newfound emotion quickly snapped into a far clearer, simple manifestation of furious strength and cunning. Whipping around, the demon withdrew a fat, hideous animatronic pig from the corner.

"It's the end of days- huhuhuHUhu!" The pig croaked and sparked in her dark grip. Gaz tightened her hold, allowing the darkness to corrupt the pig's very programming. She could into its memory- see the assembly line it came off of- she could see all of its comrades, scattered across the globe.

A sinister smile fixed itself on the girl's face.

"I was right! Haha! Victory for Dib!" the suddenly animated boy wanted to zip manically about the ship, but Tak's craft was so small he settled for flailing his arms wackily, occasionally hitting his stunned, motionless father.

Earth is burning.

"All those years, everyone was all like 'that's just my hairy uncle Dib' or 'stop sacrificing the kittens from the humane society Dib' or..."

He's... happy.

"Sweet validation!"

"You say you saw this... coming?" Membrane mentally straddled a thin... uh... synonym for membrane between blind fury at his inappropriately behaving child and blind panic at the sight the pair faced.

Thick, humongous bronze ships hovered just over Earth's atmosphere, propelling small spheres down towards the Earth's surface. Lasers and smoke alike speared and covered the planet Membrane had called home. Home... here in this tiny spaceship, all he could do was watch its demise. The humiliated scientist looked at his not-so-crazy-or-at-least-not-about-aliens-but-definitely-still-mentally-unhinged-son, who was giving himself a number of high-fives the professor thought a bit grandiose. Without thinking he spun the boy around and found himself raising his voice in hysteria.

"You say this is what you predicted. Well that's useless unless you tell me how we stop this. Dammit Dib, I'm listening. What do we do?"

"We get a closer look!" Dib gleefully spun around and jammed on the controls, hurtling the metal fist through space towards the onslaught.

"What? No- you'll kill us both!" Membrane twisted knobs and pulled some levers fruitlessly, hoping to alter the course of the tailspin.

"It is curious... these don't look like Irken ships..." Dib's glasses glowed as laserlight refracted just in front of the pair's tiny ship. Focus had finally smacked some sense into the boasting youth. "Still. I think I know how we can end this! Dad, do you see a really big ship anywhere!"

"I see really big ships everywhere, son!"

"Find the biggest one!"

Professor Membrane scanned the heavens, finding only the comparatively mid-sized dropships that had first caught his attention. "How long does it take for this ship to traverse the Earth?" Membrane yelped as Dib dodged lasers.

"Twenty minutes. Why do you ask?"

"It's time for me to test a hypothesis," the Professor hardened his gaze.

"That's cute. Because you're a scientist. Hypothesis."

"I didn't ask your opinion. Activate the... really fast drive!"

In her original assessment of the planet Earth, Tak had reasoned it was populated by pathetic, weak willed vermin creatures. Now as she sat atop the Armada's central war vessel, the Kenga Central, which she had her pilots park just off the east coast of the United States, she confirmed this reading. Down their militaries fell to the vast fleet, to the lasers and the fire and the guns and of course the hilarious maulings the Valusians inflicted with their sharp claws. There are some advantages to this disgusting body, Tak examined herself for the millionth time.

"The plan is going smoothly, Valus Prime Dastakina," Fillion saluted, emerging from a roof-hatch on the continent-sized warship.

"You've got that look again, Fillion. Change it or the Fillion robot goes online."

"Yes ma'am. It's just... these Inivisinoids are not quite the threat you made them out to be."

"You say that like it's a bad thing. Intergalactic Supremacy was decided by a technical error in a pie-making contest, they don't have to be strong."

"Wait what?"

"Enslave the remnants, enlist whatever strength remains. By force if necessary. What are you waiting for- alert the fleet now! Shoo!" she pushed her advisor weakly from her position in a Valusian lawn chair, which for the sake of convenience let's just say looks exactly like an Earth lawn chair.

"Pie contest?" Fillion blinked, deciding he hadn't heard the remark, and left her presence out of fear and, now, bewilderment.

Tak heavily slurped her straw, only to realize nothing remained in her tropical beverage holder. She threw it lazily out toward the sea, but it landed only a few feet away from her. She groaned, got up, and kicked the thing the rest of the way. It plopped unceremoniously into the drink, just like her army had submerged the human- Invisinoid, she reminded herself- race in chaos and death.

WHOOM!

Just how heavy was that glass?

Tak rotated 180 degrees to be reunited with her ship. "How-?" The thing was heavily beat up; Tak recognized the dents in its shell as laser-created. Suddenly the front hatch opened, clearing out the smoke from billowing inside the central pod. Two silhouettes emerged.

"-I told you that detour through Taiwan was a mistake! I said 'that way, you see the giant ship right there, it's right there, Dib, turn, dammit, it's right there, no that is not a mutant crocodile demon and anyways we have bigger paranormal phenomena to deal right now-'"

"Dib?"

"Hey I got us here! I don't see your spaceship license!"

"No way..." the smoke cleared, revealing the very dusty preteen and his father, gaze forever shrouded by thick goggles. "You! You were the one who helped Zim hurl me into space!" Tak's rage engulfed her sense as she walked towards the spiky-haired duo.

"Hmm-? whoa," Dib stared up at the fake-Valusian's dinosaurish, fearsome features. "I haven't seen anything like you before."

"Dib, step away from the alien," Membrane cautioned him. Tak looked up from the boy to his father, now holding a gun to her face. Shit.

"Hold on just a minute!" Tak fumbled with her camo-switch. Quickly her features melted back into the curly-antenna'd Irken soldier. "It's me, your old buddy Tak!"

The humans were not supposed to get this far.

"Holy chupacabra!" Dib remarked egregiously. "Tak? I thought you were dead."

"You know the dinosaur-bug thing?" Membrane was having trouble holding his pistol steady. Ditto rationalizing the alien creature who was conversing rather hostilely with his not-crazy-but-probably-still-not-smarter-than-the-professor-son.

"Yeah I stopped her from destroying the world, no big deal," Dib shrugged with irritating false-modesty.

"Whatever! Zim was the one who shot me down! You were just a little kink in the plan."

"Your plan which I thwarted!"

"Nuh-uh!"

"Yeah-huh!"

"Turn your soldiers around and go back to whence you came!" Membrane blustered. Dib hung his head in embarassment.

"This is your dad right?" Tak suppressed a laugh.

"Shut up," Dib replied defensively.

"I will shoot you-"

"It's too late for that, old man! My troops have already ravaged your planet! There's nothing left! Did you really think you could just land on my ship and hold me hostage."

"It worked didn't it?"

Shit he's right what do I do find an exit find an exit

"Uh.. soon the fleet will return to the ship? Yes, yes they will."

KATHOOM! BISH! WASHAMABAMALOO! ADDITIONAL EXPLOSION SOUND!

"What now!" Tak craned her neck towards the sky only to witness Kenga Runners, both in the sky and locked into the ground, fall to their end on the cold dirt. "Who the hell-" she squinted.

Darkness immediately befell the almost not quite SUPPRESS IT fearful Irken. Then pigs. Pigs everywhere, disgusting, mechanical beasts, surrounding her ship. And in the middle of them, a tiny being with fanged purple hair. A familiar face. Another hostile one.

She landed on the roof of the ship, facing Tak and sandwiched between the Irken and her family.

"Tak. So you lead this War on Pizza and wage destruction across my planet."

"What the hell?!" Tak's breathing became ragged.

"Whoa Gaz! Did you activate another Spell Drive or something?" Dib looked at the Bloaty robots with a dumb grin. Membrane closed his eyes and rubbed his temple vigorously.

"Your reign of terror is at it's end. I am the protector of this planet and its glorious foodstuffs."

Tak stared into the eyes of the demon. She felt the suffocating hold of darkness around her. "You- you..." she sputtered.

Then a flash. The darkness pierced, the sky shattered. A bolt of electricity shook the scary child: "AWAUGHAUGH!" she cried as her body pitched about wildly and her robot army fell from the sky.

"Not quite. Protecting this planet, annoyingly, falls to me."

The scratchy voice soon made its source known. A lanky, almost literally noodly alien with a rectangular jaw and three pitch black eyes materialized suddenly.

"Hey there, ya little demon. Did you try to exterminate the human race?"

Gaz growled.

"Atta girl. Unfortunately, I've got quotas to keep."

"Wait a second, just who the hell are you?" Tak, regaining some of her composure, was irritated and confused, an often deadly combination for Irkens.

"That's classified. I represent a group of very dangerous humanoids. And you," he turned back to Gaz, "fit that bill quite nicely."

"How are you here, sir?" Dib prodded the alien both literally and figuratively.

"Stop that please I have killed for less," the alien saw the hapless wonderment in the child's eyes and decided there was no harm in giving him something else to blow his mind. "Got a distress call. Maaajor deadly anomaly. I saw the ships. Then I saw her," he motioned to Gaz, who thrashed some more against the electric shackles.

"That's my sister! She's just scary. THAT'S the one who brought the armada," Dib pointed to Tak.

"Her? She doesn't look threatening at all."

"Hey! I am very threatening!"

"Really? Well then I guess you're under arrest. Hell, the more the merrier! You're all coming with me. Can I use this ship?"