The cold metal floor of the pod pressed against my cheek, showing about as much mercy as the shackles around my wrists were, and they were beginning to cut into my veins. I couldn't move no matter how much I wanted to, because my sense was too strong. Even the slightest movement would launch me into a world of physical pain.

But I didn't even need to move to feel that mental pain that I harbored. The horrible scene that had happened nearly seven days ago continued to replay itself in a never-ending loop. I could almost see as clearly as the day, the tall one standing before me, announcing my sentence. The words buzzed in my ears, and traveled to my eyes, where tears began to fall. Again.

"Liv, you have been accused and found guilty of hijacking a laboring SIR. Before your punishment is delivered, do you have anything to say?"

I hadn't answered. I stared at the floor, trembling, trying to fight back tears. The tall one accepted this as a "No."

"Very well. Your punishment is launched into space on a pod, where you will starve." The guy seems a little heartless, don't you think?

Well, that's what I thought as I stared some more, my magenta eyes narrowed down to slits as I was dragged away.

I looked up to see Pax put into sleep mode and being dragged after me, and I realized what that meant: I wasn't the only one who would be suffering. The almighty tallest were going to put him aboard the pod, too. I stared at the Irken soldiers who were hauling him after us, and then I asked in a soft voice, "Why are you sending Pax?"

One of them gave me a strange look. "Pax? You've named the SIR… Pax?"

"Yes," I said, nodding. My antenni dropped to frame my face as I looked at Pax being tossed around, and I could hear the gears inside of him clank against each other.

The soldiers exchanged glances before saying, "Err, the tall ones thought it best that the SIR not be returned to labor. It might spread the idea of freedom to the others. The last thing we want is a rebellion of the SIRs."

I had taken a moment to take this in. So it would be my fault that Pax would die. A wave of guilt flooded around me as two Irkens lowered me into a pod, and I landed on my side.

They opened a cabinet and laid Pax inside, his eyes dim and lifeless. "Can you take him out of sleep mode," I begged suddenly.

They looked at me like I was crazy. "Why?"

I sighed. "Company…"

None of them responded. They just shut the cabinet door that Pax lay in, and walked out, and closed the pod door. I lay in silence for nearly 15 minutes, sighing, thinking about things I could've done to change this fate. Then the floor began to rumble.

As I was lost in my memories, we passed into a meteor shower. I blankly watched the rocks roll by as they passed the window, wondering what it would be like to roam the universe as freely as those meteors. Sadly, I will never know.

Then there was a metallic thud somewhere to my left, and the whole pod began to shudder. The cabinet next to me swung open, and Pax's body rolled out, next to me.

I was shocked as I looked down at Pax, dented and grimy. My poor friend had gotten it worse than I had, and now there was little I could do to help him. But there was a lot he could do to help me.

I rolled over, feeling a surge of pain burrow into each of my limbs. I was tired and hungry, and my fingers were uncoordinated as I felt around on the back of Pax's neck, but finally, I found what I was looking for. I switched him out of sleep mode.

I could feel his warm glow behind me as his gears began to turn again. "Liv?" he asked, his voice shaky. "Mistress? Where are we?"

"I don't know, Pax," I sighed, not feeling the strength to turn back over and look at him. I moved my antenni across the floor, until I found his antenna. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Liv. I've been in sleep mode. Are you alright?"

"No," I sighed. "I'm starving away. I don't think that I'll last much longer."

Pax put his arms around me like he was trying to shield me from some danger. "You're… How long have I been in sleep mode?"

"A week," I said, shaking. When Pax didn't say anything, I coughed a few times. "Do you think that you could cut through these shackles, Pax?"

Pax stood up immediately and went to my arms, his small hands grabbing at around my wrist. "Yes," he said, "but hold on. This'll hurt."

"All pain is the same to me now," I said as his eyes began to glow red, and a clean stream of heat shot towards the cuff around my wrist and cut through them, burning into my flesh. I gasped, startled by the pain.

"I'm sorry," said Pax quickly, "but it's off now. Hold on, I'll get the other." Then I felt the same pain in my other wrist. The metal hit against the floor, but I didn't move my arms. It wasn't worth the effort.

Pax walked down to the cuff on my ankles, and began to cut them away. For a few more moments, we just sat in silence, listening to the beams cut through the cuffs. I flinched again just as the cuffs fell off.

Halfway through my last ankle, Pax suddenly stood up straight, his antenna moving in strange directions over and over.

"What is it?" I asked, finally getting myself to look over at him.

Pax cocked his head to the side. "We'll be entering a change in the gravitational pull. It's… strange. A planet."

"Which one?" I asked as he pulled himself to look out a window. "Can you tell?"

"No… I've never seen it before. Not on any star charts."

"Weird," I said, looking down at my gloved hands and now scorched wrists. "How heavy is the—" but I found out just then, because the gravitational pull did indeed change. Pax and I were plastered to the pod's floor. I opened my mouth to scream, but it seemed that my voice was weighed down, too.

"Why isn't the pod's engine kicking in?" I chocked out, trying to fight the pull.

"I… don't know!" screamed Pax. "I think it's failed, they don't give that much thought to a pod of exile."

"Translation?" I asked as an air pressure began to push down on me, nearly crushing my lungs.

"Crash landing!" predicted Pax a few moments before he was proven correct.

Dib: (I'm not going to switch POVs often, this is just for dramatic affect… I can't really say much about an unconscious girl.)

My front yard was in flames. Not that I was surprised, that's usually what follows and explosion. I stared for a few moments, thinking about what this meant.

Pretty much, all I came up with was that this fire was my responsibility, because Gaz was preoccupied with her new Angry Monkey video game, and dad was in his office, trying to upgrade the toaster to becoming the new and improver "French Toaster." So that left me to care about our lives.

As I tried to pick up the pieces of my brain inside my head and stick them back together, I saw something that made me jump into action: two figures in the middle of the fire, one small one dragging a larger one away from the flames.

I gasped and turned to run for the stairs, where dad kept the fire extinguisher, and then out the door. I really didn't want to have to deal with a dead body on my property.

I pulled back the, umm, pull-thingie and a rush of foam came out of it, smothering the fire. The figures were still moving (they seemed to be going faster) as I made my way toward them.

I shot away a final wall of fire. Then I dropped the fire extinguisher; not because it was empty, more because of what I saw.

An alien. It looked… just like Zim, only different. Its legs were a little longer, making it slightly taller, but not by much. Its head was a little differently shaped with eyes a little wider than they were taller, and from its body… I could tell it was a girl.

For a few moments, I was stupefied as I stared at it. Then I realized something. "An alien," I said softly. "Actual proof."

Something rammed into me. It was a robot that looked a lot like that miserable one that Zim had. As it stood over me, its eyes began to glow, and I didn't need to be psychic to figure out that something bad was going to happen. I rolled over just as heat vision fried the spot I had lay in only a second ago.

I looked it over while it tried to recover from that, and I spotted what I needed: a switch on the back of its neck. When it turned back to me, I faked a punch and kicked him when he tried to deflect it. Then I dove in a flipped the switch. The robot shut down.

I didn't know what to do next. All I could think about was the fact that an alien ship had crashed in my front yard.

A car drove by, and I dove in front of the bodies so that no one else would see it. I wasn't about to let anyone else get this proof. It was mine; all mine.

I picked up the alien girl's body, and then the little robot, and trudged my way back to the house, struggling under the weight and regretting not going to the gym when I had had the chance.

"Dad," I called as I stood in the doorway. "An alien crashed in the front yard. Can I keep it in the basement?"

Dad was silent a moment from the kitchen before saying, "Just don't let it go on the carpet, son!"

"Kay," I said, and opened the door to the basement. Then I paused and remembered something. I turned around to grab a camera.

This was the best day of my life.

Liv:

It was dark, therefore I could not see. I gasped for breath as I turned my head from side to side, staring into the eternal nothingness. Was I dead?

I stood up, feeling sick to my squeedily spooch, and felt the floor. It was hard and cold.

"Pax?" I called, looking around at the blackness again. When there was no response, I panicked. "Pax? Where are you?!" I began to run. I got about 12 feet before I crashed, head first, into a wall.

"Ow," I said, falling on my back. I stared above until, a few moments later, a light flicked on. I screamed and stood up again to run.

There was a kid above me, standing on some wooden stairs. He was smiling, but not exactly the kind of "Pleased to meet you," smile. It looked more like, "Pleased to eat you." He started coming down towards me.

I backed up against the gray wall. "Don't hurt me! Please!"

He didn't exactly hurt me. He just looked at me, his smile melting away. Now he seemed just plain curious. He stared at me, not seeming to know what to say.

I dropped to me knees and looked away from the guys gaze. "If you're going to kill me, just do it now. Get it over with."

Now he seemed surprised. "I'm not going to kill you!"

I looked up, just as surprised as him. "You're… not?"

"Are you going to kill me?"

"I don't have a reason to," I said, staring up at him.

"Are you here to try to destroy the planet?" he asked me, seeming to get his guard up again.

"I don't even know what planet this is," I admitted, looking back down, then up, then down again. I couldn't make up my mind about which was better.

The boy offered his hand, as if trying to seem friendly, but he looked a little too suspicious to be friendly. "I'm Dib. Welcome to Earth."

I blinked at the strange name of the planet. The word "Earth" rolled around in my head for a second before I look his hand. "I'm Liv. I came from the planet Irk, but I…" I let myself trail off, before just saying, "I'm from Irk."

Dib furrowed his brow, as if connecting two intricate things, and opened his mouth to say something when he was interrupted.

"Dib," growled a voice from above us. "If you're planning on being here to celebrate your next birthday, you will come up here right now."

Dib seemed to take this threat seriously. "I gotta go," he said hurriedly. "I'll be back, though."

"Wait," I said as he hurried up the stairs. He turned to look at me.

I took a deep breath. "You're not going to tell anyone that I'm here, are you?"

Dib seemed to be unprepared for the question. He quivered for a moment as he reached the top of the stairs. "I… See you tomorrow." With that, he shut the door, and locked it.

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Hey, thanks for reading! This story took a long time to write, so I hope you liked it. Please review, I accept constructive criticism. And I'm new to this section of FF, so it would make me happy if people were to recognize my story and all. So if you could review, I will be your bestest friend, and I'll review one of your stories, if you want. Thanks, and bye. : )

Oh, and I'm sorry about how badly the writing came out. I'm always like this when I start a new story, but as it progresses, I promise that it'll get better and the words will come more naturally. You guys know what that's like, right? I hope. Well, that's all for now. I'll try to update soon. Thanks!