lostcarnival | Something something the carnival is doomed.

Entry tags:

taako,
zim

Something something the carnival is doomed.

Who: Taako and Zim.
When: Before the event after they are assigned a trailer.
Where: Their new trailer!
What: New roomies! New digs! This is going to go so well.
Warnings: Language, and Zim is prejudiced against non-Irkens. The worst birds and the bees talk ever happens as well.

The Backyard is one of the few places Zim hasn't extensively examined, and for several reasons. One, he already has an excellent base and therefore no need for some backwater "trailer" residence pod, whatever a "trailer" is. Next, it being the homes of these gross mutants is off-putting and repulsive to him. Finally, he's been busy doing other things like getting offended at the lake and suspiciously eyeing some of the rides and game booths.

However, he did apparently get assigned one and it's only a matter of time before he decides to actually see it. Not out of any need for rest - Irkens don't need to sleep - but out of curiosity. Maybe there's some useful equipment he can commandeer for some evil plans. Or an evil escape. An evil something? He hasn't thought that part through yet.

He's standing in front of a small trailer, unimpressed. If he had eyebrows he'd be raising them, but instead he bends over to see that the trailer doesn't even extend into the ground. It's just... a little silver capsule, no basement, no underground labs, nothing. If it was a ship it would still be a piece of junk, in his opinion. It's lack of flight capabilities is just one more reason why it's terrible, and it makes him throw his hands in the air. "This is it?" He says to no one in particular. "It's garbage! There aren't any proper defenses! No communications array! Not even any little lawn animals! How am I supposed to work with this??"

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"... uh. I'm gonna have to ask what exactly that means before I sign anything, just sayin'."

Not that he's especially eager to, all things considered. He watches Zim climb the steps, his arms crossing over his chest, a groomed eyebrow quirking up.

Luckily he's already gotten the definition from his base's computer, otherwise he'd be in the same boat. "An intern! A trainee who works for no pay!" Which for Zim is the exact same thing as a slave; if other idiotic aliens want to call it by some other term, they're free to. There are definitely no differences. "That's a real thing, you can look it up."

"... what would you be training me in, exactly...?" Taako can't help but smirk, leaning in, his hands going to rest at his hips.

Zim stops at the top step of the stairs, still not tall enough to reach Taako's full height but now not looking up quite as high as he does while on the ground. "Oh, all kinds of amazing things!" The specifics are not things he is going to get into, as he's talking about manual labour, cleaning up after him, and other assorted chores that do not actually give anyone experience in anything, ever. "I'm brilliant, so you'd be learning so much!"

"Mmm, yeah, see..." Taako straightens up, tapping his lip with a fingertip; he looks as though he's seriously considering it. "The problem here is, I've kinda already got a paying gig, and I don't really wanna interfere with that, you know?"

Edited 2017-06-02 16:53 (UTC)

Pshaw, he's giving up an incredibly fulfilling life of cleaning up all the destruction Zim is inevitably going to cause, among other things. His loss. "Then you can find your own living quarters!" Zim cries, reaching to open the door. "This is my pod, find your own!"

Taako swings his Umbra Staff easily from where it hangs at his back, pointing it at Zim; quite suddenly, Zim is reduced even further in size, so that he can't even reach the doorknob. To be exact, he is now half his size in every direction.

Taako strolls over to him and picks him up, heading inside the trailer; there, he sets Zim down on the table.

"Looks like you're gonna have to learn how to share, my guy, because you can't stop a wizard from doing pretty much anything."

Edited 2017-06-02 18:01 (UTC)

Zim has dealt with a lot of weird alien shit in his time, less with magic, but at the end of the day it's all pretty much the same, isn't it? He's even reduced himself to being nano-sized before, albeit that was for incredibly specific, invader-y reasons that he isn't keen on repeating due to that plan's failure. This, though? This is on some whole other horrible level of horribleness. Worse than how that plan ended, worse than having to work as a frycook, worse than that one time with the Star Donkey.

Because he's reaching for the doorknob, his trajectory all thrown off as he's suddenly a lot smaller, nearly falling off the steps. Before he can process just what happened he's being picked up, and then it all hits him like a ten ton whale falling out of the sky.

He's shorter. For all his normal shortness, he is now even shorter. Drone-level short. Shorter than the shortest invader, who also happened to be himself.

Once Taako sets him down on the table he starts screaming. He's screamed and yelled before, but this is a whole new level of horrific noises coming from him. Congratulations Taako, you now how have one highly traumatized bug alien on your hands.

"WHAT???!! WHAT DID YOU. YOU!! WHAT." He's a total gibbering mess here, flailing at the air, grabbing at his wig, flailing some more. It seems he can't figure this out - or he can and he doesn't want to face reality. "I'M SHORTER. WHY AM I SHORTER??!! WHAT DID YOU DO??!!"

"Reduce." Taako smirks, though he is... wincing a little at that degree of screaming. "Pretty easy spell, I can make anything half its size. I can also enlarge stuff if I so choose."

Taako sits down on his bed, crossing his legs casually, the Umbra Staff laid across his lap.

"I'm pretty fuckin' boss at magic, if you haven't noticed."

Alright, that's terrifying. Zim leaps to his feet, trying to hop off the table and kind of unimpressively flopping off of it onto the floor instead.

"CHANGE ME BACK!!" That goes without saying. He darts over to where Taako is sitting and ohgodwhyisitsohighupnow. "I DEMAND YOU REVERSE YOUR FILTHY MAGIC!!"

"Mmm, I don't know... you did try to kick me out of my own home here. And you kept calling me a human, too." He hums out loud, clicking his tongue idly, making a big show out of thinking it over. "Hmmmm... well, are you sorry?"

Far from being in a position of caring about anything aside from his own current height, Zim is in one of those extremely rare moods where he doesn't want to argue. Or be hostile. He just wants to not be so short.

"FINE! FINE!" He crows, waving his arms like noodly claw things. "THIS IS ME SAYING SORRY!! I AM SAYING IT SO HARD RIGHT NOW!!!"

"Alright, alright. Boom." Taako points the staff at Zim again, and it opens as it casts, returning Zim to his full size in a flash.

"There. Feel better?"

Zim goes dead silent, freezing for several seconds, before he begins looking himself over to make sure he is indeed back to his normal (still short) height. This involves a lot of very reclutant poking and prodding at himself, but once he seems satisfied he flops over onto his side and curls up into a fetal position.

Never. Again.

"Much better." He sounds the furthest thing from it.

Taako is absolutely unconcerned. He sets his Umbra Staff aside, gently, and then resumes unpacking his things, setting his bag aside; he's honestly pretty glad to finally be able to empty his pockets, given how much bullshit he's been carrying around, just in case. At least, in this place, he'll be able to regularly visit his base, instead of only spending maybe every other month there.

Sigh.

He does take out his pocket spa and set it aside on its own; it's a bit oversized, even folded up, so any chance to drop that thing off is a good one. Besides, he doubts he'll need it in the middle of the workday. Alongside it goes the music box that Johann gifted him for Candlenights; he isn't sure why that's still in his belongings, but, hey, maybe it'll make the trailer feel a little more homey.

He hums lightly to himself as he arranges his belongings, ignoring Zim entirely for now.

The lack of conversation is welcoming, since Zim has a little bit of pure horror to get over before he eventually gets up off of the floor. If any other Irken, let alone the Tallest, had seen that he would have been so. Utterly. Doomed. He's vowing to never ever let any of that get out and to mostly pretend that never even happened, aside from making sure it never happens again. Zim-logic!

Very awkwardly he just stands there for several moments. So... he has a roommate now. Whatever that is. In this tiny, shitty trailer. It's all terrible. At least the guy isn't human? Not having to wear a disguise 24/7 is probably the only good thing to come of all this.

"Soooo," he starts, idly tapping his fingers together and taking the time to look around at the trailer's interior. Primitive, unsurprisingly. "What are you now, a 'roomie'? What does that entail?"

"It just means we share the room, my man. Nothing more, nothing less." He flops back onto his bed, shrugging his shoulders lightly. "We just live together and, hopefully, don't try to kill each other, you know? Just don't be a dick and it'll be fine."

Has this guy seriously never had a roommate before? Damn.

"That's it?" He asks incredulously, as he marches down the length of the trailer, eyeing everything. He'll pause at the kitchenette and poke around a little, deliberately avoiding the sink and faucet, before moving on.

"That's stupid. This is hardly enough space for a proper base, and we're expected to share??" Stopping in front of the bathroom, he turns the light on. That whole interior is just baffling to him, so off goes the light. "This must be some form of horrible torture."

"It's not that bad." Taako has honestly had worse places to stay before. "At least there's a roof. That's always cool."

Taako picks himself up entirely onto the bed, and he makes himself quite comfortable, his arms folded and behind his head, almost obscured by his cloud of blond curls.

"You could always go have it out with the Ringmaster, if you want something bigger, but, you know, she doesn't seem like the accommodating type."

Zim isn't quite as stupid as say, GIR, and he's guessing that approaching the overlord of this whole place to criticize her methods of running everything are terrible and the worst probably, probably wouldn't go over well. If this guy, who isn't even in a supervisory position, can do horribly things with his magic with zero effort, it's a given that the Ringmaster could do much worse.

He decides to just scoff and hold off on demanding certain things right now. Once he's got a good plan to annihilate her or the carnival or whatever, then he'll think about that.

"I'm just going to have to make some improvements. Even with the primitive equipment in this place any invader would be able to turn this dump into an adequate base." He might be a crazy moron, but he's more than capable at turning garbage into useful things. As he picks back through the kitchenette drawers his attention is drawn to the counters, where Taako has put all his stuff. Just grabbing it all is out of the question, but he's poking a pointy finger at the music box. "What's all this?"

More importantly, can he use any of it in making the trailer not trash.

Taako opens an eye, turning his head to look at what Zim's pointing at.

"Uhhh, that's just Johann's mixtape. You can check it out if you want to, my man, it's what the kids call 'fire.'" He smirks.

"Mix... tape?" Zim squints at the box again, peering over the edge of the counters, and prods it again. He's never heard of that sort of thing, but if it involves fire maybe it could be useful.

He'll open it and wind up, then let it go, expecting some excellent destruction or something.

It... just plays some music. It's incredibly complex and beautiful music, of course, written by the world's greatest violinist, but it doesn't explode or shoot actual fire or anything-- it just plays a really nice song.

Taako smiles, and, though it literally could not matter less to Zim, it's an actually genuine, soft kind of smile, rather than his usual sharp smugness.

"World's greatest violinist. Yeah, we hang out. He's... a little bit, errrhh, cerebral, but he's an alright dude."

Zim remains where he is, staring intently at the music box, tapping a finger on the counter as he waits and waits and... waits. For something more than just music to happen, which in his excellent opinion is not the least bit impressive or interesting. When the music goes on and it becomes clear that's all the box is for, he throws his hands in the air.

"That's it?? Where was this supposed fire?!"

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