Victims of Corporate Espionage

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN INVADER ZIM

A/N: Just throwing this out here to see what kind of reaction I'll get. Review and let me know what you think, i'm basing my updates on the review count right now.

Chapter I: Meeting

For the past three centuries, Irken Technologies Incorporated had dominated the Research and Development field. They were monsters, giants, they dwarfed even the largest rival company in the technological spectrum. The current owners Redford and Paul Tall were filthy rich off their ancestors company, which had it's fingers dug in contracts across every continent on the face of the Earth. And the only thing that could possibly stop them from continuing their life of wealth and luxury was a man by the name of Professor Membrane. He, and his company Membrane Labs, were rapidly putting out new and innovative technology on the market, some of the items they were selling were supposedly even better then Irken grade technology. Take Super Toast for example, it was already beating their micro food supply units by leaps and bounds financially.

The obvious answer to this problem was to have Membrane taken care of, however the problem was that he was almost allays in his lab, and his lab was located deep inside Membrane Labs' main compound, which had top notch security. The only way to get rid of him now would be to strike at him from a different angle. That angle just happened to be the most convenient way to deal with dangerous or allusive targets, children. Membrane had two of brats, both already on their way through adulthood.

The eldest one, a son, was twenty two, a prodigy in the tech field like his father and the apparent heir to the family throne. He had a few 'unusual' beliefs about him, like aliens and bigfoot and other crazy ideas of the supernatural, but other than that, he was a major threat to the Tall's operations down the road.

The younger child was a girl, who had barely any records in the Tall's database at all. She was nineteen, but even more allusive than her father, being mostly consumed with fast food, most notably a local pizza, and video games. There wasn't any threat there, but she would make the perfect hostage. A damsel in distress indeed.

Normal random hired gun wouldn't be able to deal with such well defended children like Membranes, who most likely had the best tech out there to stop any attempts on their lives. And Red, as some of the upper staff referred to him as, wasn't willing to commit his own personnel, being wary of information leaking out to Membrane and his cohorts about who sent the agent. And any professional mercenary they sent after the children were either too far away to do it during the window open to them, or they wanted to take time to stake the area out, which also would take too much time.

That was why Zim was the perfect option. He had been living in the area for the past ten or so years, ever since they had fired him and kicked him out of his old home. He was the best choice, because he knew the area, could be trusted to get the job done, given the right persuasive. And he was one of their best assassins, or rather, one of their best ex assassins.

"So we're decided," Red said at last as he and Paul sat in large plush chairs inside their massive penthouse before a large glass window that overlooked the entire city while sipping wine from intricate glass goblets. Paul nodded his agreement as he sipped his wine once more. In the distance, lightning flashed as the rain picked up even more. It seemed like a bad omen to the two of them, but both stubbornly ignored it.

"Let's just hope he doesn't botch this one up too..."

"I told you to park near the theater!" Gazlene Membrane shouted loudly as she ran through the ever increasing rain. Beside her, Zimmerman Zakhva, who was busy trying to shield the two of them from the downpour with his jacket, could only agree with her.

"I agree! Why did you have to park two blocks away!" Zim, as Gaz and Dib often called him instead of his longer full name, said.

"Shut up!" Dib Membrane snapped as he ran to keep up with the other two young adults. How a pair of video game addicts could outpace a man that spent his free time running after the world's most horrifying creatures, or at least chasing after sightings of the world's most horrifying creatures, would forever stump Dib. Yet the evidence was before him as Zim and Gaz ran towards his sleek car, somehow defying the rainy onslaught that was hammering every other surface in the city.

"Open the car Dib!" Gaz snapped and Dib hit a button on his key chain, which allowed the doors, all four of them, to lift upwards like wings rather than swinging to the side like most cars did. The trio quickly piled in the car, though Gaz gave up the passenger seat to ride in the back with Zim, a fact that Dib detested greatly despite the, and Dib used this term very lightly, tiny friendship that the two men shared, which had only formed because of Gaz in the first place.

"Never. Again," Gaz said as she wiped at her soaking wet purple hair, which was dropping all over her neck and shoulders, as well as sticking to her face and covering her eyes slightly. "Got. That. Dib?" She asked, still speaking in a clipped tone. Dib merely nodded, knowing from previous personal experience that talking to Gaz right now was a bad idea. Instead, he started up the car and headed down the road, his destination Zim's house. The sooner he could get rid of the Russian speaking shark, the better.

"Come now, "Zim said softly. "I rather enjoyed watching you get drenched, it makes you look so alluring..." Zim said, adding emphasis on the last word, knowing it would bother Dib incredibly. It did.

"Woah!" Dib screamed as he jerked away form the light post that he had very nearly hit. He had either fainted or gone into some sort of mind lock up. Whatever the case, he had veered off the road and almost killed the three of them because of one simple blunder. Cursing Zim in what the older man dubbed 'Nerd Speak,' Dib blocked the couple out and focused on making sure the car made it to Zim's house without any more 'accidents.'

"Moron," Gaz said, though there was no anger behind her words as she hit Zim with her elbow, which also had no real force behind it. To a normal person, they would have still been in shock over the near death experience the three of them had just had. Instead, Gaz found it kind of touching that Zim was willing to risk their lives to insult her brother and compliment her, probably in that order. Needless to say, she was feeling rather affectionate about it. "Won't you ever learn?" She asked as she slid halfway onto Zim's lap, her seat belt had never been on so it didn't hinder this task in the slightest.

"Maybe," Zim admitted as he leaned down so their foreheads were touching softly while their lips stayed only a few inches apart. "Would you be my teacher?" He asked as Gaz smirked.

"What do you want to learn?" Gaz asked, her hands now on his shoulders.

"I think it would be best if I just showed you," Zim said and leaned down to capture her mouth with his own. Gaz eagerly gave in and the two continued their make out session all the way to Zim's house, a good thirteen or so blocks away.

Dib, by the time they had stopped, was a wreck. He had fought off the sounds from the back of the car with all his will and now his eyes were blood shot, his ears were stuffed with tissue paper and his nails were demolished ruins. His shirt was badly wrinkled and the steering wheel would have permanent indentions from his fingers as he tried to tune out his sister making out in the back of the car. He had smashed the rear view mirror somewhere between block six and seven, but he really didn't want to go back into his memories to figure out exact specifics.

"Gaz!" Dib snapped over his shoulder, fighting the urge to go over and slug Zim for basically pawing his sister like some sort of expensive toy. He wouldn't even make it two steps before Gaz, or possibly even Zim, got him and beat him into some sort of nightmarish world for committing the sin of hurting Zim, whom Gaz regarded as her personal property when it came to Dib. "GAZ!" Dib shouted, but to no avail, his sister and her boyfriend were still relentless in their actions.

"GAAAZZ!" Dib screamed as he honked the horn at the same time. The duo broke apart, but not by much, just enough so that their lips didn't magnetically reattach again. "We're here, it's time for Zim," Oh how he hated that man so much right now, "To go home," And how he loved to get to say that. He almost added 'without you,' but thought better of it.

Zim smirked at Dib like a victor smirked at the loser when he claimed the big golden trophy at the finish line. He leaned over to Gaz's ear and said something quickly with words Dib didn't even begin to understand, which he assumed was Russian, before kissing her once more, this time long and drawn out with no finger play whatsoever. He then broke away and, with a bow of the head to Dib, exited the car.

Dib all but left skid marks in the drive way as he flew back down the road towards his own home, his nice, sweet, safe, free-of-Zim home.

"What do you even see in him anyways?" Dib asked as Gaz calmly moved up the passenger seat, climbing over the central console between the driver and passenger side of the car. Never mind the fact that if he crashed she would go through the windshield while in the process of moving up to the front of the car, Gaz had the audacity to keep her seat belt off still, which Dib figured was both morally and legally wrong, though the second one would get her in trouble sooner than the former.

"He's nice," Gaz said, as if that was the entire reason, and the only reason, she needed to date Zim. Of course, to Gaz, that was all she needed. Zim was the only one who cared about her, the only one who would ever give two whoops in Hell if she got hurt. Sure Dib was there, but he was always pestering her, always bugging her, trying to get her to be more like him and their father and not let her be herself. Zim wasn't just nice, he was the only one who was nice. Everyone else either mocked her, feared her, or was dead, like her mother. Who knew if her father even cared, what mattered to her was that Zim cared.

"But he's twenty five," Dib complained. A six year difference between his sister and her suitor wasn't something he was happy about. A year difference would have made him mad, but a six year difference? And that was just the tip of the iceberg too. Zim was rude, crude, and socially unacceptable. He had shown up to Gaz's eighteenth birthday beyond drunk and offering her dope as a birthday present for crying out loud! Of course, Gaz, in her own odd way, had found all of these things either incredibly endearing or funny. Which ever one, she wasn't repulsed by it at all. It made Dib feel sick.

"Dad said Mom was older than him when they married, by ten years," Gaz pointed out. "And who cares? You haven't even had a girlfriend, much less possess the ability to get one," She added, digging the knife all that much deeper in the wound. "You have no room to talk here," She said.

"I still think-" Dib started to say, only for Gaz to grab his wrist and yank on it sharply. The bone popped painfully out of place as the car veered towards the large stone fence that bordered their lawn, however Gaz pushed forward with even more force, causing the bone to pop back in place and the car to slam to a stop next to the wall rather than inside it.

"That's the problem Dib," Gaz said as she opened her car door. "You think too much," She said as her parting shot before slamming the door shut so hard that a slight crack appeared in the passenger window.

Dib, for his part, was just starting to register the fear and pain that he should have felt ten seconds ago. With a sigh, he exited the car with wobbly legs, deciding to deal with the car's parking job tomorrow. Right now he needed three things, a change of pants, a shower and his bed. In exactly that order.

"Good evening Zim," Red said as Zim shut his door. The ex assassin drew a pistol faster than Red had thought possible and had said pistol jammed against the tycoon's jaw without so much as one indication that he had left the murder industry ten years prior to the present day. "Still good with that gun I see," He said calmly, despite the fact that a very real and fully loaded .357 was jammed into his jaw.

"You have a lot of balls, coming here," Zim snarled, rage covering his features. "You threw me out of your business and told me never to contact you again, yet your standing here like everything's right as rain!" He snapped.

"We need you to do a job Zim," Paul said from his spot nearby, his hands twitching slightly due to his fear.

Zim effortlessly drew a second pistol with his left hand and aimed it over his right arm, pointing the Colt 1911 directly at Paul's head. "Purple? I would have figured Red would have killed you off by now," Zim said coldly as he looked from one face to the other, as if seeing how kind the years had been on their age.

"Paul," Red said, detesting the name that all of the old assassins had given Paul, supposedly out of either mockery or affection. "Is still useful, so I have kept him around, "He said. "You, however, have just become useful again, we need you for a hit."

"What?" Zim asked, looking surprised for the first time since the meeting had gone down. "You want me for a hit?" He asked. "Why?"

"Because you have valuable personal knowledge of the area," Red said. "And we have no agents nearby that can do this job..."

Zim froze and eyed Red critically. "You aren't suggesting what I think you are, are you?" He demanded.

Red eyed him calmly. "We want you to kill or capture the Membrane children. We need at least one alive as a hostage. In fact, killing one and holding the other one might work even better," Red said, thinking of ways to use the girl to get at Membrane, after all, killing his boy would help more than killing the girl. "You will naturally get paid heavily for this task, perhaps even a restoration to your previous title?"

Zim's answer was the cocking of both of his pistols. "If it were anyone else, I'd shoot you right now," He snarled, his anger returning rapidly. "But because I can't make Purp an only child, I'll give you to the count of ten to get out of this house and to never bother me or the Membranes again," Zim said coldly.

Red looked surprised. "W-what?" He asked, having thought Zim would jump at the chance to get his job back. Zim lowered the .357 and fired two shots off easily, the bullets hit both of Red's knee caps and caused the older man to collapse to the ground.

"If you don't drag your brother out of here in the next five seconds, I'll have two less bullets than I do right now," Zim said with malice to Paul while Red lay on the floor howling in pain, his gun still trained on both of the Tall brothers. The younger brother, who was actually impressing Zim by not whimpering in fear at that very moment, seemed to freeze as he wondered if Zim was bluffing. He wasn't.

"Three," Zim said as he cocked the Colt's firing bolt back. Paul's eyes grew huge and he quickly grabbed his brothers arms and began to pull him towards the door. "Two," Paul threw the door wide open and began to drag him through the doorway. "One," The two men had barely cleared the door before Zim fired off two rounds into the sidewalk outside, barely missing Red's expensive leather shoes.

Sighing, Zim holstered his guns and whistled softly. Immediately a small odd green dog, which closely resembled a terrier, came striding up to him. Zim bent down and ruffled it's fur affectionately. "Gir, we have work to do," He said as he eyed the wide open door and the blood stains on the sidewalk.

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