"I don't want to go, daddy!"
"Ilk, sweetie, it's only for a few days-"
"But whyyyy? I want to stay with you, daddy!"
Red sighed. "I know, sweetie, I wouldn't like you to go either, but it's too dangerous for you to be here. A space battle is no place for a smeet," He bent down on his knees to pull her into a hug. "I don't know what I'd do if something happened to you. Please, sweetie, for me."
After a few painful seconds of pondering, Ilk nodded her head. "Party when I get back?"
"Party when you get back," Red promised. "Now come on. The ship is ready."
Ilk picked up her primitive backpack-she needed something to carry her stuff due to not having a PAK of her own yet.
Her father led her to the hangar, where there was an automated vhook cruiser waiting for her. It would take her back to Irk for the duration of the conflict. What is the conflict about? Let's say the Resisty has 'inspired' other aliens to try and defeat the Empire. Poor idiots.
It wouldn't probably take more than a week to wipe them out completely, but the 'rebels' tended to somehow send assassins into the Massive to kill the Irken Leaders. Up to now they had always failed for one reason or another (mostly because of a blunder on their part), but Red wouldn't risk his daughter's safety anyhow.
Before departing, Ilk shared one last hug with her father and uncle Pur (who didn't stop crying the whole time) before she climbed into the cruiser and waved goodbye at them.
Being of the most recent models of the cruiser line, the Vhook could be put in autopilot and sent to any location with the proper coordinates even without a pilot. In this case, the vhook cruiser was cloaked and with coordinates to Irk.
Ilk stared at the Massive and the Armada as she got farther and farther. She hoped dad and uncle Pur would be fine, but then she recalled it was the Irken Armada, the strongest force in the universe. They would be fine.
Yet she couldn't help but wonder… how was Earth like?
It wasn't that she didn't want to see Irk, her people's homeworld, but she could go there anytime. The Academy was there, the Tallest Tower was there and she'd eventually be sent there to finish training.
But Earth? From what she had heard no Irken other than Zim himself had ever been there. In fact, Zim's presence there was the reason no one wanted to go near that planet. She had asked dad if she couldn't be sent there instead, but he nearly had a squeedly-spooch attack and listed off all the reasons of why she would not be put under Zim's care even if dad's life depended on it.
Well, Ilk had no intention of just being stuck inside the Tallest Tower and get bored out of her mind. She headed over to the console panel and started typing. If there was something she was good at, it was hacking into a system and making a few modifications. Thanks for your genes, dad!
System overrun. Changing coordinates…
Destination: Earth.
Well, now she better call Zim and tell him she was coming, the least thing she needed was him thinking she was a random Irken who wanted to 'steal his planet', like he put it when he mentioned Tak in one of their conversations. She dialed the number on the screen. A few seconds later the call was taken.
"Oh, Ilk-smeet! What a surprise!" the defective said on the other end of the line. He seemed gleefully surprised that she had called him. "Did you miss me already? Hehe, what can Zim do for you?"
She wondered if she was the only Irken he was actually nice to, other than dad and uncle. Probably so. "Hey, Zim, turns out-"
"Oh, wait, perhaps you want to hear more of my victories? Where do I begin?"
"Huh, Zim…"
"There's the time I sent a whole planet into darkness twice single handedly!"
That planet was Irk, Zim. "Zim…"
"Oh, oh, and there's also that time I saved my planet from the planet-jackers! The nerve of those guys, saying Earth wasn't marked for conquest!"
Oh, yeah, dad and uncle pur had a hard time when the Planet-Jackers called them to and claimed THEY had violated the treaty. Thank Irk, soon the issue was cleared up.
Most people would be annoyed at Zim not listening, but Ilk had learned how to 'communicate' with Zim, sort of. If she didn't interrupt him he'd eventually get bored of talking and would finally address the other person. Five minutes later, he was panting for breath from so much rambling.
"Anyway, do you need anything from Zim?"
"Well, as you've probably heard the Armada is going to face with a bunch of rebel ships and dad didn't want me to stay there. So he's sending me over to Earth so you'll make sure I'm safe." Ilk explained. It surprised her she had managed to say that whole sentence without Zim interrupting her.
Speaking of Zim, he had that look on his face. The expression one made when they just learned the kind of information so shocking or so good they took a while to fully process it. Eventually a big ear-to-eat grin tsites his features, foretelling his euphoric response.
"YES OF COURSE! ZIM WILL GET READY FOR YOUR ARRIVAL, BE SURE TO TELL YOUR DADANDUNCLESEEYOULATERBYE!"
The transmission was ended.
Another advantage of the zhook cruiser: its hyper drive was very advanced and it would arrive to Earth in an hour or so.
"GIR! GET RID OF ALL THOSE PIGGIES! COMPUTER, PUT REXY BACK INTO HIS PEN!"
"But we're having a piggy-party!"
"You put him back in! That overgrown reptile already tore off four of my favorite robot arms!"
Zim ran around the lab moving random stuff around, either back in place or out of place. This was great! The perfect chance to prove himself to the Tallest once again! Tallest Red had entrusted his own daughter to him and he wouldn't let him down. What did smeets need anyway?
"Computer, do we have diapers?!"
"Diapers?"
"Didn't you hear! Ilk-smeet is coming, we're going to need LOTS of diapers!"
"You do realize she's has probably outgrown already diapers, right?"
"DIAPERS! Argh, must Zim do everything himself?!"
An hour later an order of diapers and smeet-stuff arrived from Callnowia, only for Rexy to eat all the smeet-feed and then throw it up on the lab floor just as the vhook cruiser landed in the hangar. Zim panicked and somehow managed to usher the tyrannosaurus into the elevator to send him back to his pen in the lower floor.
When Ilk stepped out of the cruiser Zim went to greet her. "Welcome, Ilk-smeet, I'm glad you made it to his puny rock on that- ZHOOK CRUISER!" his attention instantly shifted to the ship and soon he was fawning over it.
Ah, Zim. Typical. "Yeah, daddy and uncle Pur said you could… keep it."
"THANK YOU, MY TALLEST!" Zim shrieked happily and hugged the cruiser, muttering about all the things he could do with it. Ilk estimated it would last him about a week before he inevitably ended up destroying it by accident.
After the new ship euphoria passed Zim toured Ilk around his base. Ilk noted it was… outdated in comparison to other Bases of Operations she had casually seen in transmissions from other Invaders. It didn't take a genius to figure out why, though.
The house on the surface wasn't that bad. Was this how human homes looked like? As soon they stepped from the elevator into the living room GIR was running towards them, holding a fishbowl with a small but apparently carnivorous fish. "Hiiii, baby smeet! Here's a fishy for you!"
Zim panicked when he realized what he intended to do. "GIR, you idiot, that's earth water!" He quickly jumped in front of Ilk just as GIR splashed the liquid, fish and all, all on top of him as he received the water meant for Ilk.
She jumped back when Zim started screaming in pain and rolled down on the floor with the snappy fish biting on his antenna. She swore she even saw his skin sizzling and releasing steam. GIR seemed unfazed about his master being in pain and had rushed into the kitchen, then came back with a human dish he called 'waffles'.
They were tasty. It wasn't that she had a choice, GIR started screaming and wailing when she tried to decline them.
Okay, that wasn't a first good impression, Zim. Get it back together. Your reputation with the Tallest depends on Ilk being happy and thinking he's the 'greatest Invader ever', so he had to make sure she was content and overall unharmed. If she got one single scratch on her when she went back to her father and uncle it would be a one-way trip back to Foodcourtia.
This means he must keep an eye on Ilk-smeet all the times and keep her away from every single potentially-harmful things: water, meat and bees. But he had to go to Skool in an hour…
"Huh, Zim?"
"What is it you need, Ilk-smeet? Do you require another diaper change or is your tummy aching?"
"It's not that…"
"Never fear, once we get home I will be completely available for you!"
"Riight… And why did you bring me along?"
"What a better way to learn how to become an Invader than watching the almighty Zim in action!"
"I sort of understand that, but I mean why am I in a smeet carrier?"
"It's for your own protection, Ilk-smeet!"
Sweet irk. Sure, dad also insisted on treating her like a little smeet, but this was ridiculous. Zim brought her to skool, indeed, but rather than letting her walk he put in her in a sort of gear that let humans carry their own smeets without using arms. Her disguise consisted of a human-smeet outfit and contacts to hide the pupiless, blood-red color of her eyes. They were scratchy, but she'd have to get used to them for the following days.
And so she was free to take a good look around the 'skool', term humans used for their own Academies. That's right, in plural, because there were lots of them dispersed throughout Earth instead of having a single one.
What caught her attention were the filthy-hyoomans, as Zim called them, particularly their height distribution. The shorter ones were offspring and the taller ones were 'adults', plus she found that it took a regular hyooman twenty one Earth years to be ready to survive by himself.
Pitiful, really.
Once Zim entered what could be called the 'classroom', Ilk noted none of the other children gave him a second look despite his unnatural green skin, the only part of his body-apart from his outfit and his PAK- he hadn't bothered to hide. From her observations hyooman skin could be brown, pale yellow, white, and the 'fleshy color' that didn't exist in the Irken color palette, but not green.
"Is that a baby?" one particular male hyooman with dark clothing, big round eyes and a sort of scythe on his head pointed at her.
"None of your concern, Dib-stink!" Zim snapped as he went over to his seat.
"Aww, she's cute!" One of the female tried to touch Ilk's hand. Ilk swatted it away.
"No touching, if you'd please."
"Aww, she even talks already! Can you say Sara?"
"How curious that an infant who casually also has green skin has such level of speech." The Dib-stink said suspiciously.
Ilk panicked for a moment until she noted none of the others were taking him seriously even though he pointed out something very obvious: she recalled newborn hyooman smeets are not supposed to talk like adults, instead they acted like she did when she was a newborn smeet herself. She had seen enough videos of herself as an infant to recall.
Instead of talking, the next thing Ilk did was to suckle on her finger, now causing all the females to come over and 'awwww' a bit too uncomfortably close to her and Zim.
The bell rang and everybody went back to their seats just as a thin, pale old female hyooman in black clothing slid into the classroom like a shadow. Ilk thought of a snake, especially when the woman's forked tongue-how can a human have one, by the way?-sizzled momentarily before slithering right in front of Zim's place. Ilk felt a shiver down her spine.
"Why did you bring a baby, Zim? This is not a kindergarten!" The woman's voice was cold and reeking with hostility.
"Oh, Zim just had a… little sister! And my 'parents' couldn't take care of her, so I brought her along!"
The scary woman in black gave a hiss. "If she starts wailing you're going straight to the underground classroom."
There wasn't much to say about the five hours spent in Skool other than the teacher, Mss Bitters(what an appropriate name) was scary, the Dib-stink was annoying and the food was surprisingly healthy with lots of sugar and grease.
Except for the meat. She had no idea of what the hyoomans did to it, but it fused to an Irken's skin and burned it. Other than that she didn't have much to complain.
After Skool ended (thank Irk, she was getting tired of all those female kids fawning over her) Zim was on his way home when they were confronted by none other than the Dib-stink himself.
"Okay, now that we're by ourselves you can drop the act," he said pointing a finger at her. "Who are you?"
"I'm…"
Zim interrupted. "You'll never know, Dib-stink! You shall never find the identity of Ilk-smeet, the almighty daughter of my Almighty Tallest Red!"
Ilk facepalmed. Dib blinked. "You just told me."
"LIES!"
"You did tell him, Zim." Ilk added. "You know, if you were going to do that you should have let me introduce myself."
"Ah, so she's the daughter of one of your leaders," Dib concluded. "Interesting. And she's with you because…?"
"The Almighty Tallest have trusted me to look after her while they destroy the Empire's enemies in space. Clearly they have faith that I will keep Ilk-smeet safe!"
Dib-stink half-closed his eyelids. "Or somebody got the coordinates wrong."
Ilk's antenna perked up and for a moment she had a panicked expression. Unfortunately, Dib noticed it. She had just confirmed him that theory.
"You lie! LIAR!"
Irk, she better think of something before Zim got suspicious. "Hey, Zim, is there any fun stuff to do here?"
Almost immediately all his attention centered on her. "Why, of course! I said I'd take you around to celebrate my new Zhook cruiser, didn't I?"
"Yaay!" Ilk chirped, and noted the Dib-stink's confusion at the mention of the zhook cruiser.
3 days later
Mental note: never go on a ship ride with Zim on top of the fastest Irken ship ever again.
It wasn't that he was a terrible pilot. He wasn't. The problem was that he knew no limits and he was too much excited over testing out the Zhook cruiser.
Other than that, though, she didn't have much to complain. Despite his big ego, sometimes paranoid tendencies and habit of not listening to people, it was fun to be around here. GIR made tasty things (such as muffins) when he was not driving Zim nuts, minimoose was fun to play with and Zim was… nice, at least his own way. Well, nice to her at least, he clearly wasn't this 'kind' to anybody else.
Earth was fascinating too even though it did have its disadvantages, such as its highly-polluted water, inedible meat and pea-brained inhabitants.
In fact, it was so cool and she had so much fun with Zim that she forgot she wasn't supposed to be there in the first place.
Later that day when Zim went to Skool and she stayed alone in the lab, Ilk called Skoodge to see how things were going back in the Massive. Perhaps they had already dealt with the rebels.
Skoodge's head appeared on the screen. Ilk waved amicably at him. "Hi, Skoodge, how are you-?"
"Ilk, is that you?! Oh, thank Irk! Thank Irk! Are you alright?! Did they hurt you?!"
Ilk blinked. "What?"
"The rebels, where are they keeping you?! The Tallest have been combing the galaxy for you!"
Ilk just stared at the Invader in confusion until realization dawned unto her. Oh, no. Dad had sent her to Irk. He must have panicked when they informed him she never arrived and thought someone had kidnapped her.
Shit, shit, shitshit.
"Skoodge, snap out of it!" Ilk yelled. "I'm fine! I wasn't captured by rebels, I'm with Zim!"
There was a moment of silence as Skoodge processed what she just said. "Wait, what? You are on Earth?" Ilk nodded nervously. To her surprise Skoodge sighed in relief. "Thank Irk! At the very least you're not in rebel hands! How has Zim been treating you?"
"He's nice… in his own strange way."
"Well, I'm glad you're safe. You've got no idea how many rebels Tallest Red has tortured trying to extract your location from- OH SWEET IRK! THE TALLEST! THEY DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE, I HAVE TO INFORM THEM!"
"Skoodge, wait-!" Too late. The transmission had been cut off. Ilk sighed in dismay. It wouldn't be long before dad called or even brought the whole Armada to Earth. How would Zim react when he found she had lied to him? She wouldn't like him to get deactivated because of her.
"Well, that was intense." The computer said.
"So you heard it?" Ilk sighed.
"It was hard not to considering he was yelling. Looks like you and master are in hot water."
"No, there's no water here."
"I know that, it's an Earth-proverb for when you get in a difficult situation in which you are in danger of being criticizes or punished; excerpt from the Cambridge English Dictionary."
"Kambrij?"
"It's a human academy for adults- Oh, incoming transmission from the Massive. Should I write your epitaph?"
Ilk sighed. Well, better to be done with it before Zim came home and found out she had lied to him and now both were in trouble because of it. "Put it through."
The image of the Massive's bridge appeared on the monitor, and the first thing she saw was dad fuming.
"ZIM, I SWEAR, IF SOMETHING HAPPENED TO ILK-!" Red froze when he realized it was his daughter, not Zim, who had taken the call. Seconds later his demeanor changed. "ILK! AREYOUOKAY?! IVEBEENWORRIEDSICK! ITHOUGHTTHOSEDAMNREBELSHADCAPTUREDYOU! HOWONIRKDIDYOUENDUPONEARTH?! AREYOUHURT?! DIDZIMHURTYOU?!"
"Red, calm down, she can't understand anything like that! Besides, you're spitting over the donuts!" Purple said, moving his snack bag away. He did frown at Ilk, however. "But he has a point!"
After a few seconds of taking deep breaths, Red managed to calm down enough to talk in a slower pace. "Ilk, answer me! How did you get to Earth?!"
She couldn't tell him she had hacked the ship or she'd be in big trouble, but she couldn't let him think Zim was responsible for it when he didn't even know she wasn't supposed to be there. Okay, Ilk, you'll have to pin the blame of someone else. "I think someone put the wrong coordinates."
"Seize whoever programmed that zhook cruiser and throw him out of the airlock!"
"Huh...My Tallest, you programmed it."
"Oh. Nevermind then!" Red rubbed his temples and muttered. "I can't believe I sent my own smeet to that backwater planet."
"It wasn't that bad, dad. I mean, Zim was very nice…"
"Zim? Nice? Come on, Ilk, the day he actually does something right your dad and I will go on a permanent diet." Purple chuckled. It was quite a serious comparison, the idea of a Tallest without his snacks was inconceivable.
The elevator doors opened at that moment. "Hey, Ilk-smeet, how about we…?" Zim froze when he saw her father and uncle on the monitor. "M-My Tallest!" He automatically went into a saluting position. "How nice of you to call!"
"Hi, Zim." Red growled.
"As you can see Ilk-smeet here is perfectly safe and sound and she's had a good time! You can ask Zim to look after her anytime."
Ilk was pretty certain dad was thinking over my corpse. "Yeah, whatever. Ilk, we will send someone to pick you up. Please don't move from there, I've had enough squeedly-spooch strokes for a lifetime!"
An hour later, another vhook cruiser arrived ASAP to take Ilk back to the Massive. Dad and uncle had completely forgotten about the zhook cruiser they had sent her in, so she guessed they wouldn't mind if he kept it. She asked the pilot if she could say goodbye, and he didn't seem to mind it.
"Bye GIR."
"WAAAAAAHH!"
"Bye Minimoose."
"Squeak!"
"Bye computer."
"Please come by more often! You're the only intelligent person I can talk to!"
When it came to Zim, though, a simple goodbye wasn't enough. In a surprisingly bold moment Ilk wrapped her arms around Zim's leg in a hug. "Goodbye, Zim." She heard him sniffling a bit and for a brief moment thought he was about to cry, but somehow he managed to keep it together.
"Goodbye, Ilk-smeet… Don't forget to tell your father and uncle what a wonderful babysitter Zim was!"
Ilk giggled. "I won't."
As the ship started lifting and she waved at them one last time, she noticed Zim had finally lost it. He, GIR and Minimoose had embraced one another and burst out into tears. Ilk giggled as the ship left the Earth's atmosphere and entered hyperspace.
She was pretty certain dad wouldn't let her off his sights for a long time, but the experience was worth it.