Marry The Night

I'm gonna marry the night,
I won't give up on my life,
I'm a warrior queen, live passionately tonight.
I'm gonna marry the dark,
gonna make love to the stark.
I'm a soldier to my own emptiness,
I'm a winner.
I'm gonna marry the night...

"Marry The Night", Lady Gaga

You could say I was the easily discouraged and easily envious type of girl.

I was the best, or at least, that's what I always told myself. An Irken's pride was the most valuable possession, and it makes sense why it is also the most fragile possession, like fine, clean and clear glass. Easy to create for yourself and easy to lose or break. Once it's broken, or lost, it's harder to fix, or find.

I've learned this lesson once while growing up, and I'm sure every Irken has every once in awhile.

Words could not even begin to describe how hard I worked while in the Academy. I trained for long hours for battle tests, studied into endless nights for the Science Lab exams, and all the hard work had started to lead to the goal I had set so high up for myself to accomplish. To be an Elite or an Invader, you had to be the best, and I was the best. But sometimes, the pride could get to your head, and trick you, like it did to me.

The first time I ever questioned my abilities to the point where I almost gave up, was a few years back. I wasn't sure of the exact date, though the bitter memory still lingers. It was during our battle testing, where each of us had to battle one another in an arena, and the one with the highest score would have first priority in the first-choosing of the Elites. This was before the possibility of being an Invader ever officially surfaced for me. Before I was fully aware I might have actually been just as great a warrior as any, to be one of the greatest Invaders Irk has ever seen!

No, this had been before all that. When I felt the first ache of my heart and surge of envy flow through me all at once, poisoning my pride with tainted bits of cruel denial from just one little incident. One little thing can easily crush your spirit when the possibility that you might not be the best, became a reality.

And I had beat them all and made it to the finals with flying colors. It had been so simple to me, watching everyone fail all around me while I grew taller with pride until it was all I thought about. All those endless days and nights training and training so hard that by the end of each day I'd be literally covered in sweat and blood- it was all worth it. Every moment, every scar earned from training alone, I wore them proudly like a badge of honor. Hard work could really be rewarded, instead of the Irkens who did nothing and were rewarded by luck.

Turns out, I was wrong.

And as I stood there, beside another Irken named Paeo who had also done just as great in the arena as I had. But when I glanced over at her, at this other Irken who I thought was naive for even thinking she might have been even just as powerful as me, I felt the pride in myself well up, covering me in a satisfying warmth as we stood there waiting for our final scores, on who had done better than who.

But I wasn't prepared, at all, for what came next.

Our battle instructor read off our two scores, mine first, and Paeo's score second. And when he read aloud, that she, Paeo, a naive Irken who I highly doubted would have ever in her lifetrained as hard and long as I had, received the higher score, with me in second place.

The pride I had took years in carefully building with patient practice, shattered, and I was left standing there, wallowing in silent agony, stripped of any confidence I once had, as Paeo was lead away to met the head general of the Elite army at the time, General Fhaem, to have the first-choosing to become an Elite.

All that grueling work... Wasted.

All the confidence... Gone.

I was practically naked of any vanity, of any glee as I stood there, alone, wondering what I had done wrong, questioning my superiority and my strength. But it caused me to realize that a saying I had been told during my smeethood, when I grew up sure that it couldn't be true, had in fact, been true:

Good work always comes unnoticed.

I had done better than the other Irken, and yet I was still not chosen, my outstanding work really had gone unnoticed.

The heartache and the internal anguish stayed for months after that, while the pride, all the self-esteem I once had, didn't come back for another year until all the envy I felt toward Paeo, and all the rage toward her and all my personal despair, twisted and melted together into a new-found strength I could use as a weapon: That no one could make me who I am, and no one could break me or my pride, and the following year I came back, holding my head up high once again, ready to complete the Academy and become an Elite, and possibly, maybe an Invader.

And now here I was, as a janitorial squad on Planet Dirt.

How and why you might ask?

Because I am surely cursed, that's why.

Fate had set for me to try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, and almost succeed, only to have it tampered with by one Irken's carelessness that caused, not only the blackout on Planet Devastis, but for me to be trapped in the rubble of the wreckage he had caused.

70 years I am to spend here, cleaning up trash left by others, over the wide fields covered in miles of never-ending debris and garbage… The girl who had spent years working much harder than her classmates, was cursed to forever fail, no matter how hard she tried. No matter how hard I tried, I was still to be punished like this for no reason.

It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair.

Maybe I was being punished for having had such a high self-esteem, for actually believing in myself in the amount I had, for actually being as proud I was. But maybe I had taken that pride to far, and fate decided to punished me by having me here now, while other non-working Irkens were rewarded with success, not by hard work, but by pure chance. 100% luck.

My grip on that dreaded broom they made me carry around on here, tightened as a new feeling pulsated through my veins, boiling my blood.

No. This was not my fault. Being stuck here on Planet Dirt was not of my obvious choosing. I was forced here by someone else's actions. That Irken I had seen walking around with his stupid snack while I called out to him to at least help me out of my predicament. He had walked away, though I knew even then that he could hear me, and instead I had no choice but to wait for help while trapped in that room buried under the rubble. It was because of that Irken why I was late and missed my test. The test that would have changed my life forever. My hard work would have been paid off .

And it was all because of him, and I found out his name from someone before I was sent here. A name that filled me with a horrible loathing, a name that made my blood boil by even hearing:

Invader Zim.

No, I never knew him personally, but I had heard only his name, and that he had gone to the Academy while I was there. That we were somewhat the same age. I got to see a single picture of him before I was sent to my 'job' here, and that cocky, egotistical-grin of his only fueled my growing anger, spreading through me like a rapid wild-fire: It could not be contained.

I threw the broom down, wiping off a trail of sweat that rolled down from my forehead. I was stuck out here on Planet Dirt with the dreaded sun now high in the sky while I worked for hours and hours into the long, laboring day. Comparing this to battle training, this job was actually more exhausting than the training had ever been.

I glanced up at the brownish-tinted sky, and, as I thought hard about a possible idea I had come up with the night before, I kept my eyes locked with the polluted atmosphere of Planet Dirt.

Maybe it was possible. To earn leave here, find this Zim-guy, and earn my rightful place in the Empire. Granted, I hadn't come up with how I'd leave this dreaded place, or how I'd find out where this Zim was... And it was for that reason, that I knew the plan would have to wait. For now.

And between you and me, I was more than willing to wait.

The more time I had to plan everything, the more the plan would be a success. The longer, the better, I suppose.

And I smiled to myself, rubbing my hands together as my eyes darkened in the gleam of the sunlight.

Maybe there was a chance to finally redeem myself.

A/N: Bleh, crappy one-shot is crappy. I wrote this after something that happened today. I love ZATR, but this was obviously before they would actually fall for each other... You know the motto. Anyway, today, in my English class, I am the best of the best. Literally. English is my strong-point in school, and I love writing, and everyone knows I can write, and normally I'm not one to actually really think highly of myself, but I have to say I was proud of myself. Was.

We wrote a descriptive essay on our favorite place, and I turned it in thinking I had done an excellent job, when our english teacher told the class that one of the essays from our class was one of the best pieces of writing she had ever read by a student. Everyone thought it was me, and I actually thought maybe it could be...

Nope. It wasn't.

It was this cocky guy in our class, one of the popular kids of the school who everyone liked and everyone wanted to be friends with and talk to. Unlike me, where, when I do try and talk with others, they either don't acknowledge me, or stare at me like I'm retarded.

I've been writing since I was ten. Its all I have as a solid idea of what I want to be when I'm older. He, I know, had only take up writing this year. I never felt like such a failure in my life when my paper, my handwork, tuned in to just one of the "other ones", the pointless, meaning-less papers that were all the same, even though I thought I did good! I swear, I looked ready to burst into tears. I was seriously discouraged.

Oh wait, there's more to this story, the icing on the cake, the fucking cherry on top:

OUR TEACHER SENT HIS PAPER TO BE PUBLISHED.

FUCKING PUBLISHED TO THE GODDAMN PUBLIC. A DREAM FOR ANY WRITER, MY DREAM, WENT TO HIM. A GUY WHO ALREAY HAS EVERYTHING I WILL NEVER HAVE.

I was ready to give up writing after that. I am not good at anything, not even writing. But I thought it make a good one-shot idea, so I wrote this at school during lunch and during homework help class right after it all happened.

*sigh* Anyway... yeah. On a slightly happier-note, the song "Marry The Night" by Lady Gaga fits Tak PERFECTLY. I mean, if you watch the new music video, the song is about holding your head up high and still chase your dreams even after a dream-crushing experience happens. And that, in all, reminds me of what Tak would do, and when you add up my personal despair with an uplifting Lady Gaga song; You get a one-shot. From Tak's POV since I'm still practicing with character POV.