Disclaimer: Invader ZIM and all related characters and materials are property of Jhonen Vasquez and Nickelodeon.

Make It What You Want It
By: Nanaki BH

One tap. Two taps. A giggle.

My first thought was, "Who the hell is knocking on my window so early in the morning?" I didn't want to wake up. My eyelids felt heavy and decided to stay closed on their own. I tried to turn over on my side and drag the blankets back over my head but I was met with a couple of complications: my left hand and my right hand; neither of them would budge. I realized suddenly that they were tied up completely somehow. I snapped my eyes open and groggily looked to their side of me, noticing that my hands were firmly held by metal cuffs, securing me to a vertical examination table.

When I looked down, I finally found the person who had woke me up. It was GIR, ZIM's tiny robot companion. Safe in their base, he didn't find it necessary to wear the familiar green dog costume. He was, on the other hand, wearing a very stupid grin. I was elevated somewhat off the floor, so that could have only been him earlier banging on the exposed base of the table.

My ankles were bound to the vertical table, too, so no matter how hard I tried to kick him, my legs just wouldn't move. God, I just… wanted to punt him. He was so small and incompetent and… dumb. It was only fitting that ZIM kept around such an annoying robot. If I were him, I would have had the thing reprogrammed immediately. How was it ever possible for him to get any work done?

Oh yeah, that's right. He doesn't.

Even after years of knowing him, even after we entered high skool together, he'd barely made any sort of progress. For that matter, he had barely even grown. He was still the same old, short, lame ZIM who couldn't quite come up with the proper way to destroy Earth and the human race. It was really quite simple; all of our world leaders even caught on. Yet ZIM remained behind, still attempting to turn humans into things like giant slabs of meat.

GIR probably wouldn't have had to wake me up. My ankles weren't enough to support me and my legs were starting to hurt. I could only wonder what sort of sick things ZIM was thinking of doing to me; nothing too terrible, I could be sure, though. He had never done anything to me the last few times he abducted me. One thing was clear, though. If he didn't come soon and get me down, I would be in a lot of pain.

"Hey, GIR," I called down to the tiny robot. "GIR, I need to ask you to do me a favor." Predictably, he wasn't paying attention. How could ZIM ever get him to listen to him? GIR was in a world of his own. He stared up at me with those bright, glowing blue eyes but I wasn't deceived. I knew there wasn't anything going on behind them. As they say, "The lights are on, but no one is home."

"GIR," I pleaded, my bare arms straining against the cuffs. "Listen, GIR, you really have to get me down from here before ZIM gets back."

Finally, GIR decided that it was high time for him to respond. "Master said I have to keep an eye on you. He doesn't want you to escape." I winced at almost every word he spoke; his voice was sharp and high and… painful to listen to. When my ears stopped ringing, I considered what he'd said. So ZIM was using him as a bodyguard? It didn't surprise me.

I decided I would bribe him. Bribing works best with the simpleminded guards you normally see on television shows. "GIR, I know you like tacos. I'll get you all the tacos you want later if you'll just let me down from here."

For a moment he gave me no response but then suddenly a large grin broke out on his face. Soon followed were the laughing and the overjoyed incoherent babbling. I wanted to plug my ears with my fingers but couldn't. I wanted to shove a foot in his mouth, but couldn't. All I could do was pray that the robot would hurry it up; accept the tacos and release me.

"Tacos! I love you!" he squealed. And praise the Lord, the little maniac finally agreed to release me. He ran up to the controls across the room, pounded on them, and all at once I came crashing down from my holds. I eased my dignity by telling myself that there was no true graceful way of falling.

My ankles and my wrists were a pulsing red color from being so firmly clamped to the table. I stood, instantly feeling very cold and underdressed. ZIM had taken away my shirt and coat and Heaven only knew where he had put them.

"Can you go get my things for me?" I asked GIR. He stuck his synthetic tongue out and gave me that 'you'd better dumb it down' look again. I sighed, clapping a hand to my forehead in exasperation. "My things, GIR; I came here with a shirt and a coat on. Can you go fetch them for me like a nice human dog would?" No response. "I haven't forgotten about the tacos."

There was a pause and I was almost ready to give up on asking. Then, to my surprise, his eyes turned red, he gave me a salute, and shouted in a very professional sounding voice, "Yes, sir!" I blinked and he had already disappeared out the door to look for my stuff.

That gave me the perfect opportunity to take a look around the room I was being held in. There were tanks lining the walls behind me. Most of them were empty but there were a few that held some real, live, alien specimens. If only I had my jacket, I would have whipped out my camera to snap some incriminating extraterrestrial evidence. They would have made Mysterious Mysteries very happy. After all, I was the one they owed their success to. It was my videotape of ZIM and GIR that caught their attention in the first place.

I wandered over to the control table where GIR released me from. I could make neither hide nor tail of the keyboard. The letters appeared to all be in a different text; IRKEN, most likely. The screen was all in the same bizarre language and, since they probably explained what was on the screen, I couldn't understand much of the diagram being displayed. It seemed to be a detailed diagnostic on his VOOT cruiser. I could only imagine the sort of information it held. It was sort of disappointing, in a way, that ZIM had to be evil. If he were on the side of good, just imagine the sort of things mankind could learn from the IRKENs!

The automatic door flew open with a shrieking noise and I practically jumped in surprise. I whipped my head around, expecting to see ZIM standing there but instead it was GIR, to my relief. There was still something disconcerting about it, though. He had on a very discontented looking face, holding my coat and shirt in his tiny arms. Out from behind him stepped ZIM, his arms folded menacingly over his chest.

"How'd you get caught?"

ZIM sighed, pushing passed GIR to stand toe to toe with me. "How didn't he get caught is a more appropriate question, Dib. He came and told me you wanted to know where I put your belongings. How could you put those things on without the use of your arms?"

I sighed, disappointed in both GIR and myself for such a careless mistake. I didn't even have to see GIR to know that he was disappointed and dying to press his self destruct button. I would have laughed at my pun but it was nearly impossible with a short alien staring me down. Or up.

That time I just couldn't resist laughing. He narrowed his eyes and ground whatever the hell an IRKEN can call teeth. He put a clawed hand down on my chest, light at first, and then gave me a shove to send me stumbling back awkwardly. GIR was gone from the doorway, the clothes lying on the floor forgotten. He had probably run, afraid of "his master" when he got angry. I still had no idea what he had planned for me but he had to know that he wasn't going to get away with it.

I stood up, standing my ground against him. I was going to be a paranormal investigator and if I was ever going to be one, I wouldn't let a stuck up little alien boss me around. I balled my fists and stood up close to him, tipping my chin so I could look down into his face. Pointedly, I jabbed a finger at the middle of his chest, effectively pushing him back a step.

"Well, ZIM?" I taunted him with a smirk. "How you do think you're going to keep me here if you aren't even armed? Are you going to stun me with your shortness? Oh, I'm just so frightened."

"You just don't understand my plan for you because you have such a ridiculously puny Earth brain!" I didn't care how threatening he thought he sounded, that was just ZIM's way of saying that he didn't really have a plan. Ten to one, he just wanted to capture me to keep me from… Oh hell, what am I saying? ZIM never has a plan. For whatever reason, I was actually hoping he had one; my boring life, I guess.

"You don't have a plan, ZIM," I said with a soft sigh.

Predictably, he was enraged. "I do too have a plan! It's… It's… To take out your brain and fill your empty head with jellybeans!" He pointed a finger at me in fury, a light flush tinting his green skin; the telltale sign of his embarrassment.

"I thought you said I had a ridiculously puny Earth brain. Whatever happened to that, hmm? And look, I know you didn't bring me here with anything in mind. You don't have a plan. You just don't, okay? So how about you stop acting like a complete ass hat and just let me go like always?" I dropped my hands from my hips and stalked over to the other side of the room where GIR left my clothes. "I'm taking my things and leaving."

"But you can't leave!" he pleaded desperately after me. I didn't care what he had to say, frankly. Unlike him, I had a direction; I knew where I headed. I wasn't going to hang around playing games with him. I was going to expose him as an alien no matter what. And either I would capture him or on film. Unfortunately, it appeared that wasn't going to happen either way. As soon as I picked up my trench coat, it was apparent that there was no camera in the pockets.

I snapped my head around and gave him my best glare. I should have expected it. Why else would he have taken my coat? The little sneak stole my camera again. I hadn't been keeping count, but he had stolen and destroyed countless numbers of my cameras before. I ran up to him, my feet heavy on the floor. My fingers curled in his collar and I lifted him up to eye level. He didn't look intimidated at all and that just served to make me ever angrier. "Where's my camera at, ZIM?" I asked politely through gritted teeth.

"Like I would tell you."

Violently, hoping to knock a bit of reason into him, I threw him to the floor. I pressed one of my booted feet down onto his chest and ground it around a little. Intriguingly enough, IRKENs could feel pain just as much as any human. While I was amusing myself, GIR showed up in the doorway again. My camera!

I jumped off of him and launched myself toward GIR. And missed. I turned my head and watched from the floor as he scampered over to ZIM and took his picture. He giggled a little and came on back to me, that time, handing me my camera. ZIM looked completely shocked. He seemed to be in a state of total, complete petrifaction. I knew what would be coming next. I pulled myself to my feet as quickly as I possibly could but it wasn't fast enough. I soon had one very angry alien clinging to my shoulders, attempting to wrestle the camera from my grasp.

ZIM put a hand down on my shoulder hard and dragged his clawed fingers cleanly through the skin. Involuntarily, I dropped the camera, yelling out in pain. I fell to my knees, forgetting all about my precious photos. ZIM took that time as his opportunity to get off of me and scramble on his hands and knees to reach the camera. I looked up and was horrified that I had actually let him reach it. GIR was still just standing around watching our skirmish.

"Finally," ZIM breathed, settling himself down on the floor with the camera securely in his hold. Inside my mind I was already beating myself over the head with the damn thing. I had that miserable sinking feeling that he was going to destroy it; bust it up until it was only an unrecognizable mess of plastic, metal, and film. I closed my eyes tight, readying myself for the inevitable crunch. Instead… I heard the click of the shutter and the pop of the flash. I cracked open an eye timidly and instantly, upon seeing him, my eyes widened.

He sat there, still grinning, the camera's lens turned toward himself.

"There you go." He tossed me the camera and stepped off to the side for a moment to retrieve my clothes. "You might want those, too," he sang, grinning stupidly.

"Why'd you just take a picture of yourself?" I asked him, mystified. "More importantly, why'd you give it back to me?"

"You needed a better picture than the one GIR gave you."

"But wasn't I just beating you up?" Honestly, I didn't get it. If I had just been kicking the snot out of him only a matter of minutes prior, then why would he be doing something kind for me? Sure, I would take the film and I would take them with glee but wouldn't that just make me feel…

"I know you feel bad about it already. And I know you haven't been able to expose me – similar to how I've never been quite able to dispose of you, Dib. We're even now as far as I see it. I caught you and it went nowhere. You'll take those pictures and get nowhere, I assure you. You see where this is going?"

It was a bit of a twisted way of looking at things and, of course, it was a little insulting. At the same time, I knew it was true. ZIM wasn't even exaggerating. We had put ourselves into a never-ending circle of pointless conflict. Apparently it was a large circle because you would think I should have realized what was happening, oh, maybe the third time events repeated themselves, at least.

So why was I doing what I was doing? Why was I still hunting him down intentionally if I already realized I wasn't getting anywhere? The only rational answer was… persistence. I was always longing to get some kind of public recognition. You know, maybe that is it. My life is so boring otherwise. Nobody wants to listen to me, let alone believe me; not Gaz, not dad, not even our dead puppy. Though ZIM, he believed me. He knew of the existence of aliens because he was the alien.

"ZIM, I'm sorry," I muttered, dejectedly hanging my head.

He backed up in surprise. "What you do you mean sorry?"

"You're right. What we're doing is dumb and pointless. I feel like I'm just wasting your time. Thanks for the pictures, I guess." I finally pulled my shirt on over my head and fit on my jacket. I stuffed the camera back into my pocket, careful to keep it away from my keys. When I stood, he rushed to my side and grabbed my wrist.

"Where do you think you're going?" he asked. He wasn't mad. He wasn't trying to keep me there, either.

"Home, I think. And, ZIM…?"

His red eyes looked up into mine and he didn't have to say anything.

"Thanks for giving my life some meaning."

Author's Notes: I always wanted to make a ZaDR fic but I never thought I had the ability or something. I like to do everything very literally; not in the fangirling out-of-character way. After looking over just about everything by Vasquez, I think I managed to come up with a bit of insight. Invader ZIM is strange in the sense that it doesn't seem to be his preferred series so it doesn't necessarily share the same satiric humor with the others. It was what Nickelodeon made it, really, so I tried to adapt to make it feel natural, in-character, while still following what's known as Vasquez's work. I hope I accomplished that and I hope you enjoyed reading. Feedback's always appreciated! If people like it enough, I'm considering writing another chapter with a little bit more on that photo ZIM took. Just to make things a little cuter, I suppose.