Note: This is a story that comes after Green Angel and before White Demon. The in-between time when Zim begins collecting cast off children.
Zim returned to his base and sighed deeply, flicking off his holographic disguise. It had fooled every hyuman but Dib, but then Dib was the only one he didn't need to fool. The Earth courts had made sure Dib couldn't come anywhere near his base or himself. He should have thought of it when he was still bent on conquering. He shook the thought off, it didn't matter now. At least he would have some peace and quiet.
He glanced to the couch. There sat GIR, his eyes glued to the television in front of him. Some Earth primate was on the screen, making faces. He moved past GIR and into the kitchen, pulling out a chair and sitting. He'd been thinking a lot lately, and doing more and more of it in the upstairs portion of his base.
He couldn't stop mulling over the smeet he'd found as he wandered the streets months before. He'd researched death ceremonies for this planet and found them too varied, so he settled for death ceremonies in this land mass they called US.
"So strange for them to name a unit of Earth after a pronoun." He'd mumbled.
His choice had come down to burning her shell and scattering the remains, or burying it exactly six feet below the Earth's surface. He'd chosen the latter, utilizing his PAK mechanisms to help, and erecting a grave. He hadn't known the smeet's name, so he'd engraved, "Buried here was a female smeet, unclaimed," on the stone. In Irkish, of course. He'd added the date she died as an afterthought, remembering that that was important to members of the deceased's family.
"What family?" he'd growled angrily. "Where was her familial unit? Why was she in the streets? And who would hurt a smeet so badly?"
He traced aimless patterns on the table in front of him. Occasionally an antenna twitched, as if flicking away an imaginary fly. He continued to sit until the moon had replaced the sun, and the stars had emerged from hiding. Then he stood, turning on his hologram, and announced loudly, "GIR, I am going for a walk. Stay here and guard the base."
The android turned to him and screamed. "AUGH! WHO ARE YOU?"
Zim smacked his forehead and sighed. Briefly he turned off his disguise and glared at GIR, who settled down again. Turning it back on, he marched out the door in his usual stiff-legged gait.
At first he stayed on the main street, eyeing the garish, blaring neon lights with distaste. They reminded him too much of Foodcourtia, and his horrible enslavement as a food service drone. A few people milled around, but this city seemed to, as he'd finally learned to say without snickering, "roll up its sidewalks at night."
Stupid earth phrases. Never making any sense.
He turned down an alley behind one of the few places still open at this time, one that seemed to serve intoxications to the adult population of this place. He crouched in a shadow and waited.
It wasn't too long. It never was. Every week at this time, a young male hyuman exchanged monies with another male hyuman for a plastic bag full of chemicals. Zim had taken to observing the hyuman who purchased the chemicals, and what occurred never failed to sicken him.
The young male would take the chemicals and inhale them through his nose, and after that he would begin acting erratically. He would scream and shout, and sometimes cry. He would flail his arms, and occasionally do things Zim could only guess were unacceptable even to the hyuman's culture.
Tonight would be the night, he decided. If he was to be exiled to this stinking planet, maybe he could make something of it. Starting with the cast-off smeets. Granted, this hyuman wasn't quite a smeet, but he didn't seem to be an adult yet. At least, he was never accepted into the intoxication rationing center.
The two hyumans had just parted ways and the one with the chemicals settled down by a garbage receptacle to inhale them when Zim leaped out. The boy was startled. He snatched his bag and shouted, "Get your own crack, you sonofa—"
Zim leaned forward and placed a wet cloth under the hyuman's nose. The boy jerked backward and hit his head on the hard wall of the building, then fell limply to the side. The alien smiled. If hyuman films gave him the idea for this chloroform, them perhaps they weren't so useless after all.
It took some maneuvering to get the boy on the hoverlift he'd brought. He was, after all, still much smaller than most of these wretched creatures, but he manged. With a whisper, he ordered the lift to cloak itself as a hot-dog vendor's cart, and pushed it back to the base, grumbling the whole time.
Once he'd hauled his hyuman down to the lower levels, he pushed him into a specially designed chair and strapped him in. Gingerly he grabbed the bag of chemicals with forceps and set them aside to be analyzed later.
The boy had begun to stir, blinking his eyes sleepily. Zim stationed himself by the boy's head.
"Hyuman child," he asked commandingly, "What is your name?"
"Tom," muttered the boy, squinting at Zim. "Who're you…"
"I am Zim. That is all you need to know about me. That, and the fact that you won't be wanting those chemicals soon."
The boy's eyes widened. "Ya can't detox me, that what this is? I'll die! I tried goin' clean once, felt like it was gonna to kill me!"
Zim rolled his eyes. "Computer, analyze the chemicals in the bag. I want a comprehensive molecular structure, and all possible antidotes to its toxicity. Meanwhile, begin flushing Tom's system of the toxin."
Tom began struggling, shouting, "I didn't consent, ya can't do this. I wanna have a lawyer!"
Ignoring him, Zim turned to the readouts as robotic limbs descended from the ceiling to begin work on Tom. He had an antidote to discover.
Groaning, Zim massaged his temples. "Let's try this again. Your parental units—your mother and father. Who and where are they?"
"Don't know, don't care." Tom maintained, sticking out his chin defiantly. "Ran away from foster care cause they kept stickin' me with idiots who drank too much or hit me."
"Just go back to this foster whatever. They have care in their name, they have to take care of you."
"But they don't." Tom crossed his arms. "Nobody does. Nobody cares, nobody tries to help. 'Cept you. You're weird, but you did it. I dunno how ya got the drugs outta me without withdrawal, but ya did."
"You can't stay here!" Zim exploded. "This is NOT what I planned. I don't have a place for smeets!"
"I dunno what a smeet is, but I'm not lookin' to stay here free. I can work." He shrugged. "Just tell me what to do, as long as I can stick around. Not like I've got anywhere else."
Zim resisted the urge to drop his disguise and scare the stupid smeet out of his base. If this was what came of him attempting to help hyumanity, hyumanity could just help itself from now on!
"Ya done good by us." He muttered awkwardly. "I'd'a still been on dope if'n ya hadn't cleaned it outta my system." --Tom, White Demon
