(A/N): Seeing as I left you with a fairly big cliffie to watch a cartoon I thought I better have an appropriately explanatory chapter… Heh heh heh…

I can't keep myself away! I refused to make a cake for this!! CAKE!! See how much I love you? Err... The story!!

P.S. If you're allergic to WUBBISH then you probably shouldn't be reading the Author's Notes because the author is insane and you'd probably have to go to hospital to have your brain replaced. Just a little afterthought... ;)


All I could think about was the pain. I could never tell where it was but it was very definitely there. One moment it would be down in my leg and a second later up in my forehead. I wondered where I was too; if I was still at the Skool or if someone had found me and the pain was actually someone dissecting me at this very moment. Every thought I had had eventually ended up back with the pain. Well, wasn't much I could do about it now. WAIT! Hold on! This is not the mighty Zim I knew that I so was! I was going to fight it. The pain couldn't get much worse anyway. And there we were, back to thinking about the pain.

I tried to summon every bit of my being into moving. Even just a finger; one finger. Maybe they would've seen that movie "Independence Day" too. Those aliens had looked too much like the Urganians…

Suddenly someone dumped something onto me. The pain that I finally thought I could bear had turned into a terrible burning sensation. A voice I had known since the day I'd been activated spoke in the back of my head.

REACTIVATING.

It felt as if someone had taken a lead case off of me. One last shock rippled through my body. I sat bolt upright and screamed. Everything was fuzzy and out of focus and it seemed like I'd need to relearn my fine motor skills.

When my vision cleared, the first thing I saw were two bright blue circles very close to my face and my scream turned into one of shock as I lurched back again.

'INTRUDER!!' Gir screeched and waved his arms about a bit for effect.

'Where?!' I gasped and quickly swung around violently, ignoring the pain. The mission was being compromised! It took me a moment to realise Gir was talking about me. Then I saw the dripping bucket in Gir's hand. He began clanking it on his head and giggling.

'Gir why would you do that?!' I cried at him furiously, the burning finally dying down. A bit. I looked around. At least I was definitely in base and not some science lab.

'I DON'T KNOW YOU!! HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME?! INTRUDER!!' He continued to yell at the top of his voice and he threw away the bucket with a loud clang as it smashed into something. I winced then I shook my head and turned away. I felt incredibly wobbly and sore. Like I'd been to ten gym classes in a row… No, nothing could be that bad. Except maybe this. I needed to ask Computer what was going on.

'COMPUTER! What's going on?' I asked. Nothing happened except Gir continued to spout rubbish and run around madly.

'Uhmm... Well, maybe you should go and see for yourself.' Computer suggested. See for myself? What was going on? 'We dislodged the spit ball, by the way... It was in your BFM port.' He added as if it would please me. It helped.

I was in the inventing portion of the base and I didn't think there was much in the way of mirrors down here. I tried to slide off the makeshift bed but my legs felt like jelly and walking made me feel dizzy. It didn't help that when I walked past Gir he fired a piggy at me in Defence Mode. I was just able to stop myself from tumbling to the floor and I made way to lift while telling Gir that he was to stay out of my way.

As I leant against the side of lift, I tried to steady myself while thinking of possible outcomes. I knew it was incredibly dangerous to have the insides of your PAK come into contact with foreign DNA sequences. It was the first thing in the manual! That was why only you and machinery are allowed to program your PAK. The invention of the robotic arm had been the first of many revolutions in Irken technology. So why wasn't I dead? Not that that was something I wanted, it just didn't make any sense.

When Chunk had shot the spit ball at me, it had lodged in one of the more major ports, the Bodily Functions Monitoring port. It kept heart rate, blood pressure and nutrition levels in check, along with most of an Irken's other bodily functions, as the name alludes to. Getting a spit ball in there, I had thought, would surely be fatal. As I suspected it had tried to rid itself of the obstruction and nearly destroyed my body in the process.

I needed to see the damage it had caused me, as it seemed like that was what Computer had hinted at, so the next of my problems was finding a reflective surface. I generally had no need for something like that, but there must be something in my base I could get a good look at myself with... I though hard, but my head started throbbing so I thought a little less.

The Transmitter! I always checked to see if I was looking respectful before contacting the Tallest by putting my image up on the screen! Well, ever since Gir had put that "kick me" sign on my back, anyway...

The lift sailed up to the Communications Room smoothly and I looked down at my arms, legs and torso. Nothing looked different about them, but something was certainly unusual. About what, I had no idea.


As I sat down in front of the control panel I found I had to lower the seat a bit. I growled. Gir must've been pretending that it was a space ship again... Stupid robot. That reminded me of the specifieds and I decided to go see them after this while I absentmindedly set up the vid-cam.

Gee my connection was slow. It took, like, fifty Irk years to do anything... I really needed to update it, but that could be hard as I was out of range of Irk to get an average broadband connection. It would cost and arm and a squeedily-spooch to get the "rural" version... Finally my vid-cam got a feed, but instead of phoning the Tallest I set it to display the view of me onto the monitor.

The vid-cam was angled at the floor and all I could see was my feet. I fixed it up then sat back to see –


'WAAARGGHHHHHHHH!!'

Gir heard the scream from the house. Master must've found the intruder.