Scarecrow345: That is funny, thank you for following me, too (-^.^-) Well, for one Bob gets a friend from work who'll be showing up soon, at least he's not suffering through this alone anyway. I'm glad you enjoyed it though, I admit that chapter felt a little odd, the original episode is pretty brutal when you sit down and think about it, I didn't really realise until I wrote it, so I'm glad I was able to insert a bit of the usual fluffiness. I really enjoyed writing Zim & Skoodge's friendship too, I've done a couple of other works touching on it from Skoodge's perspective, so I really enjoyed trying to do a little from Zim's.
So, a lot has happened in the past two weeks, I hope all of you are alright. Everyone here is fine, apart from a bit of stress trying to finish one particular assignment remotely and more than a little cabin fever; for better or worse my crisis clock seems to run fast, so I had already finished my panic stage before quarantine started. The start of my new term is nearly a month away too now, since we get so many international students we basically have a second quarantine period for anyone coming in, hopefully it will give me enough time to get some of my projects pulled together. Also I'll have mondays off again next term, which I'm really happy about since it will make updating much easier.
Anyway, as I said last time we're focusing on somebody who's perspective we haven't followed yet: this time we're covering Game Slave 2, we're getting a Gaz chapter.
A quick note I wanted to mention before we start is that Iggins' species in this was only in the comics, issue 17 to be exact, it's never named and I know not everyone follows the comics, but if you look up "Dolores" on the Invader Zim wiki, you'll at least have a picture (and why it's called Schmeevee)
Anyway, enjoy everyone (^.^-)
Growing up with somebody teaches you to recognise their habits and moods at a moment's glance, Dib had heard of siblings with a close bond developing their own sort of code when communicating with each other. He'd even heard of twins with a telepathic connections, resulting from having been together from the start….He wondered what it was like to have something normal like that.
Instead, he had his sister Gaz, who had spent much of her life cultivating a stoic facade. True he could discern what she was feeling from the minute variations in her expressions and body language, but it had still taken a long time, and for years she could read him far better than he could read her. Then there had been times like today where she...projected and whatever emotion she happened to be experiencing, usually some shade of angry, poured out of her and created a barrier pushing everything else away.
Thus before Dib even made his way downstairs and saw Gaz hunched over her cereal like a magenta vulture, he knew that she was in a bad mood. "What's bothering you?" he cautiously asked.
Gaz clenched at her spoon so hard that it bent "BigIgg2001" she growled.
"BigIgg2001?" Dib was no expert in many of the things Gaz was interested in, and he hoped the ensuing pause would eventually lead to her giving him some context for her sour mood.
"It's a guy from my company's community boards" she explained through gritted teeth "Lately he's been making trouble on the boards and poisoning it for everyone"
"You own the forums too, don't you?" Dib asked "Why don't you just ban him?"
It was a harmless enough question, but it caused Gaz to clench the spoon so it straightened out again "Don't you think I've tried that!?" she hissed, she whipped around to face Dib so quickly it looked like her head had spun backwards "The problem is he always stays just within community guidelines, so he's obnoxious but I can't actually get rid of him" she seethed "I could change the guidelines to allow me to ban members at my discretion, but that could just cause more problems; it's easy to abuse a loophole like that, so adding it puts people on edge"
Dib was slightly confused by that last point; Gaz never seemed to have any qualms about making others anxious, in fact she often preferred that people were intimidated into giving her her space. Why would she want to avoid doing so now? Either way, he tried one last piece of advice "What if you ignored him?" he offered "If no one replies to him maybe he'll get bored and leave"
Gaz slammed the now lightning bolt shaped utensil on the table as she rose from her seat "You just don't get it, do you?" She spat, and with that the storm cloud known as Gaz returned to her room.
Gaz sat alone in her personal sanctuary, her quiet minimalist cube of a room. The room itself was as much an enigma as its owner, at a glance it seemed like the perfect fit for Gaz: all straight edges and dark colours that were only broken up by the occasional tinted light given off by her electronics. But then if you got to know her it began to seem strange, she'd go to her room to get something or put it away, but if you went in yourself, there would be no trace of anything but the most basic furniture and electronics, with one or two decorations.
This was exactly as she wanted it, everything important was there, but out of sight so only she knew where it was and she would only look at something when she chose to. A perfectly controlled environment where she could work and think without any interruptions.
At the moment she was mulling over what to do about the troll.
Some might advise her that games were just a fun distraction, talking about them doubly so, and shouldn't be a big enough part of your life that one unpleasant person on one website would be an issue, but for Gaz it wasn't so simple. Video games had been an important part of her life for almost as long as she could remember. They had captured her interest from a young age, been a bonding activity for the typically anti-social child she had been, and had served as her personal refuge when...When she'd needed one most.
Unfair things happened in the real world, and sometimes there was nothing you could do to stop it. It didn't matter if you were a good person or a bad one, or what you did to prepare; there were times where fate would kick you and it simply was what it was. But games were something she could control: nothing really happened without her allowing it, if it did she could reset it, she could even dive into the game's code and change things if she wanted to. It was only natural that she would immerse herself in reprogrammable worlds that restored her sense of control at a time when she felt she had none...
Of course the one problem with that was she had gotten too good at them too quickly, and before she reached adulthood Gaz had found that nothing really challenged her anymore. It had been a personal crisis that had set her on her current career path as she realised that she had changed the code on both games and other machines, and if she could do that, it wouldn't be too big of a step to build it herself and create her own games.
It turned out she wasn't the only one who had the same problem; when she released her first title, the thing she heard most from people who played it was that it had been the first real challenge they'd had in a long time. From there other people had tried it for similar reasons, eventually word of mouth caused it to trickle down to people who weren't anywhere near skilled enough to beat it, but wanted to try because people they knew had played it. Some developed their skills to meet the challenge, some didn't. Over time it grew into a loyal fanbase, and a close-knit online community.
To Gaz video games were more than a leisure activity, or her livelihood, or even something that had helped her through a difficult time; more that they were an integral part of the way she had come to think of things. In her eyes this wasn't just some guy being obnoxious and spoiling everyone's fun, it was somebody simultaneously attacking a part of her and intruding on what was supposed to be a community of like-minded people. Yes those like-minded people enjoyed dismembering CG cosmic horrors, but they were her people who enjoyed dismembering CG cosmic horrors.
Then a thought struck her; true she couldn't ban him from the website, but she could still make him miserable in the one place he never expected.
It wasn't too hard to trace the signal and find the guy's IP address, he didn't even do anything to hide it, and from there to find the location of the computer he used the most to access the website. She'd been told a few times that she would make a great spy and she supposed she had the skill set for it, but it wasn't really her calling. This time, however, was one of the exceptional situations she'd break them out for.
Once she knew where to go, getting there was easy; she was already scheduled to go to a few meetings and events for the launch of her latest title, something she couldn't really avoid with how anticipated her first G-rated title was. Besides, travel between Earth and developed space was a lot faster at full speed and without Dib stopping to check for life on everything they flew past.
She had time for a special side trip, and the flight itself gave her plenty of time to prepare.
"I'm off, Iggy! I'll see you tomorrow!" an older woman of a six-eyed, blob-like species called from the driver's seat of her vehicle.
"Bye mom, have fun at work" her son, a younger man, called distractedly from inside the house, his mind already on other things. If he had been paying attention he would have realised he was seeing his mother off to her shift at the local ER, the night shift, and that any fun to be had at work would be gleaned at the end when the emergencies she was tasked with were over and she was regaling the next shift with tales of the more...colourful incidents. In this case one involving a rather embarrassing misuse of sports equipment.
As soon as she was out of sight, Gaz made her move and just as Iggins was about to sit down the doorbell rang. The man waited for a moment in hopes that whoever it was would go away on their own, and grumbled in irritation when the doorbell rang again. He dragged himself up the stairs and over to the front door where he found a dark mauve Vortian woman was waiting for him.
"Hello, is this the home of 'BigIgg2001'?" Gaz asked; it was just a formality, she'd checked multiple times that this house was the correct one, and she was certain that she was not only at the right house, but speaking to the right person.
"Yeah, that's me" Iggins said, confused to be addressed by his handle name, but keeping it out of his voice "Why do you wanna know?"
"I'm from customer service, we've received a number of complaints about your conduct on the Doom Slayer community forums" Gaz replied in a crisp yet monotone voice, giving her impression of a customer service representative.
Actually seeing the guy in person, Gaz was far from impressed, granted her expectations hadn't been especially high to begin with; odds were that somebody who spent that much time being obnoxious online didn't have very much else going on in their lives, but still. Judging by the decor, he lived with at least one parent, that itself wasn't necessarily a strike against him, but the dowdiness exuded by the kitschy knick knacks adorning the entryway painted a clear picture of whoever raised him.
The old fashioned stylised floral wallpaper, lace doilies, and cheap mass produced porcelain figures and flower baskets made Gaz feel like she walked into a retirement home, or at least the home of somebody in a helping profession attempting to mask the underlying morbidity of their work. The family and child photos hanging in the hall and living room combined with the sort of person Iggins had turned out to be told her that whoever raised him had been doting and good natured, but utterly blind to what a jerk their son was. She also noted there was no trace of Iggins' gaming devices in the living room, which meant he likely had a floor to himself; well that made things easier.
"I haven't broken any of the rules, you can't touch me" Iggins retorted, only to find Gaz's finger inches away from his face.
"You just keep telling yourself that" she said cryptically before leaving.
As soon as she was gone Iggins shook her warning from his mind and returned to his computer, ready to start in earnest. However, when he tried to connect to the internet, he found that he couldn't. He gave a sigh of annoyance; something must be wrong with the router, with that thought he went down the hall to fix it, only to find it had disappeared entirely.
That was weird. It must have been moved, that might explain why it wasn't connecting though; it probably hadn't been plugged back in properly.
Iggins searched the room and found no trace of it before going to check the home office, but once again there was no sign of the router being there. Next he checked near his mother's favourite chair, sometimes her tablet had trouble connecting if the router was too far away, but no. This continued a few minutes longer as he checked every room he could think of without finding it; by this point she'd already be at work and have put her belongings away, it looked like he'd have to wait and ask her about it when she got home tomorrow .
Annoying as it might be it wasn't a complete disaster, he still had plenty of consoles to choose from. Once he returned to his part of the house he turned on and set the schmeevee, sat down in his bean bag chair and switched one on.
Nothing happened.
He got back up to try turning it on manually, still nothing, he tried checking the cables only to find they were gone; now that was really weird. He quickly looked around the room for them, only to find the cables for several other consoles were gone as well. Something was definitely going on.
The man started another search, digging around to try and find the cables and checking every gaming device in the house. Everywhere he looked was more of the same; no trace of the cables, any cables, and the batteries had all vanished as well. Iggins grew more panicked and desperate with each room he searched, someone had to be behind this, and was likely still in the house with him. Just then the hall lights began to flicker and footsteps sounded overhead, heightening his anxiety even more.
He ran into the bathroom to splash some water in his face to try and calm himself down, blindly feeling for the light switch until his fingers connected and the lights flickered on overhead. And that's when he saw it.
Piled on the bath mat were missing the cables to his newer consoles and every one of them had been cut in two and tossed on the heap. The only cables that seemed to have been spared were the ones for the older consoles, which were still missing. Iggins stood frozen in the doorway, screaming as if he had just discovered a murder scene, until his attention was pulled from the carnage by a cryptic message written in the fog on the mirror.
"You voided the warranty?" Iggins read aloud with a note of confusion in his voice. Just then a lone flash of lightning went off, despite there being no other signs of a storm, and the image of the Vortian woman flickered in the mirror. He wasn't sure if this made things better or worse; somehow she was upside down as if she were standing on a floor, despite there not not being anything high enough to stand on. "Nice try!" He shouted as much to himself as to Gaz, trying to mask his fear "You haven't gotten to me!"
His superficial show of bravado was wasted, Gaz was already back in her ship and waiting for the next stage of the plan to start. The router and still unaccounted for cables and batteries were piled beside her, all belonging to older consoles, the mother's tablet, handhelds, and the like. There was no reason to go after the unsupported hardware, or to punish the rest of the household; this was between her and Iggins, she could return the rest later.
It was too bad the warranty joke had gone over his head. The idea behind it had been that warranties could be voided by misusing the product, and that in her eyes his conduct constituted misuse of his consoles, hence voiding the warranty. She supposed it had been too cerebral for him, but she could think of a few people who would get a laugh out of hearing the details later.
Either way, it was time for her to finish preparing the second phase of her plan.
There was no doubt Iggins was unhappy about the destruction of his gaming cables, but he wasn't about to let some customer service clerk stop him, no matter how scary she was; all he had to do was go to the store and buy some new ones. Sure it was a pain and a little pricey, but it wasn't a huge deal, after declaring as much to the already absent Gaz he went to the garage, got into the remaining vehicle, and drove to the electronics shop.
The town wasn't that big so it only took a few minutes for him to reach the shop, the only one in town, but fortunately opened late. He smiled, confident that he had won, as he quickly parked and entered the store.
"Hey Iggins" the clerk greeted "I wasn't expecting you today, it's still a few weeks before your next pre-order arrives"
"I'm not here for that, I need to replace something" Iggins replied as he made his way to the gaming section of the store, inconveniently located in the back; why was the gaming stuff always at the back of electronics stores? Schmeevees, and tablets, and cameras all had their own corners at the front of the store, why did he have to walk an extra twenty feet?
When he reached the gaming department he saw that there were no cables to be found, they must be moving things around again. He looked around throughout the store, but couldn't find the replacement cables he needed; this store wasn't as well stocked as the ones in the city, but it was big enough that they'd regularly have at least a few sets of cables in stock. He tried checking a few of the 'plan-b models', cables that weren't made specifically for consoles but still compatible, but those were gone too.
"Where are the gaming cables!?" Iggins shrieked over his shoulder at the clerk, the frantic desperation clear in his voice.
"We're out of stock, some Vortian woman came in twenty minutes ago and cleaned us out" the clerk shrugged "Same for the batteries, even the handful of consoles, said she had some big event she was buying for"
Iggins stood there in stunned silence for a moment, three of his six eyes twitching, how could she have bought out everything!? She'd have to spend a few thousand monies to do that, there's no way any normal person would drop that much just to mess with somebody. Desperately he made one last search, only to end up screaming in frustration when he found even the small pile of items that fell under the display rack had been picked through and dashed out the door, still screaming.
The clerk chuckled and opened a bag of candy that had been included in the purchase as a tip, perhaps working on a weekend night wasn't so bad after all.
Elsewhere Gaz was seated comfortably in her ship, watching the madness unfold as she leisurely put the finishing touches on a door prize basket. She had needed to pick up a few things to fill them out with, all the better that she could take care of this at the same time. How ironic that Iggins didn't realise who she was, but the clerk did.
This town being relatively small did make things a little easier, there was really only one place he could have gone to. The next step had taken a bit more narrowing down, but with a few well placed searches and phone calls she had been able to figure out where this was likely to end up and get that squared away. In fact, she had a little too good of an idea where this would end up, but it was fine; she was taking the necessary steps to make sure she was as in control of the outcome as she wanted to be.
Iggins stormed up to the ship still voicing his frustration: Fine, she could keep him from playing at home, but she couldn't reach everywhere.
He climbed back into his vehicle and drove into the city; his mother had taken the long distance ship, but this was still well within what the smaller one could handle, even if it was agonisingly slow. Even more so when he saw the express route had been backed up due to random inspections to prevent impaired driving. Iggens slammed his face in frustration onto an open spot on the control panel before turning to take a longer, but less crowded route.
True, he could just do something else this evening, but at this point it was a matter of pride more than anything; the mysterious Vortian had made it personal, there was no way he was just letting her win without a fight.
Finally the towering shopping mall came into view, by now Iggins was chewing his lip so hard it was a miracle he hadn't drawn blood. He quickly pulled into a parking space and barreled through the doors, just barely avoiding crashing into the directory as he checked which floor the gaming cafe was on; usually he preferred to play at home so he hadn't quite memorised the location, but he was desperate.
As soon as he found it, he ran up to the elevator and hammered the up button. His single minded focus on making it to the cafe as fast as possible pushing the warning sign about the elevator out of his range of perception as he pounded the express speed button. No way was the Vortian going to stop him now.
Iggins anxiously watched the elevator's display panel, his eyes growing wider as the car ascended and the numbers went up, by the time he neared his destination you could scarcely see the rest of his face beyond his bulging, bloodshot eyes and agitated grimace. When the chime went off to signify he had reached his intended floor, his face lit up with a look of relief typically reserved for people who had been rescued from a barren wasteland, to his way of thinking, he had.
The moment the doors opened he rushed out and crossed the hall as fast as he could to try and make it to the gaming cafe, he was so focused on his goal that he didn't notice the security guard until her arm reached out to stop him. "Sorry, I can't let you in tonight" the guard said "The whole cafe's been rented out for a private event"
"What are you talking about!?" Iggins shrieked as he hyperventilated "Nobody's having a party here! It looks the same as it always does!"
"Hey, all I know is some Vortian woman came along earlier and said she was renting the space for the night and to let in anyone but you" the guard said in a calm but assertive voice "There she is right now, if you want to talk to her about getting in" The man turn and, sure enough, was met with the increasingly familiar stony continence of Gaz.
"You!" Iggins tried to shout accusingly, but at this point he was so unnerved by her it came out as a choked squeak "You're crazy, you know that?" He completely missed how unhinged he sounded himself.
"Uh, need me to taze him for you?" The guard offered, holding up the stun weapon.
"Tempting, but no" Gaz replied "Go inside and enjoy the party"
"If you're sure" the guard shrugged, already walking inside; yes, she was supposed to check, and she just did, but she wasn't one to refuse an opportunity to play bubble lizards when it presented itself.
"This doesn't change anything, you know!" Iggins yelled as he hurried back into the elevator "You might have shut me off for tonight, but you can't shut me off forever!" He stomped on the floor of the elevator for emphasis and was moving quite a bit for the currently precarious balance of the car. "I'm still the best gamer on the forum! I'll always be better! And there's nothing you can do about it! What do you say to that!?"
Gaz gave him a look that could instantly freeze boiling water "I don't care"
Perhaps it was karma, or the supernatural powers some believed Gaz to have, or simply that Iggins hadn't let the elevator settle before he stomped in it, but no sooner had the words left Gaz's mouth than the elevator began to plummet with its dumbfounded occupant inside.
By right Iggins should have been panicking and desperately trying to find a way to save himself, but he was too stunned by the Vortian's words to fully register what was happening. How could she not care!? He was the best, and she wasn't, how could that not matter? Either way, the long trip to the ground floor gave him plenty of time to try and figure it out.
Gaz looked down the elevator shaft before calmly phoning the front desk and telling them to close off elevator number 3. The basic course of events had gone the way she expected they would, and the ambulance was already on standby, though part of her bitterly wondered if her time on Earth had started to soften her edges enough to have called it in the first or she had simply decided that death was too good for the likes of him and that his suffering should be prolonged, she found the latter the thought more comfortable.
Iggins woke up in the hospital, still in a haze from the cocktail of painkillers and sedatives in his system that took a minute or two to blink away. Once his head cleared, he looked down to see he was now sporting several casts and braces, and there was some sort of gift basket on the table across the room. Almost as if sensing his return to consciousness, the door opened and a familiar Vortian woman walked in.
"I see you survived" she said as if she'd had no doubt that he would.
"You! What are you doing here!?" Iggins stammered, part of him hoped she was a hallucination from the lingering effects of the medication, but he knew she likely wasn't.
"I came to give you an update, the complaints against you were settled while you were out" Gaz stated in her best customer service voice "It seems you suddenly made several violations of our community guidelines, and your account has been terminated"
"You did it, didn't you? You went on my computer and made those posts!"
"If you're going to dig near the ocean, don't complain when the hole floods" Gaz said calmly "But we're not leaving you completely cut off, I've included an early copy of our next upcoming release" she added with a smirk "It's a VR title, so you should be able to play it with no problem, since it's obviously going to be a while before you can do any twitch puzzles"
Iggins looked confused for a moment before the realisation sunk in as to which game he had received "But that's a babies' game!"
"You should feel right at home then" Gaz quipped before leaving.
Some time later, Gaz looked pensively out the window as the ship flew through space. It was funny in a way, she'd complained about her brother chatting away while they were flying to Earth and had desperately wanted silence and solitude, but now that she had it, it felt as if something were missing.
She'd already posted the announcement that BigIgg2001 had been banned earlier that day and elsewhere the various members of the forums were celebrating the news. With that matter permanently squared away, and a day or so of travel before she reached the launch event, she didn't really have anything to do for the time being, the ship didn't need any attention, so she wouldn't be interacting with anyone unless she chose to. And she could indulge in a few hours of personal time.
She slid a small, black box from under her bed, one that would normally be indistinguishable from the shadows, and opened it up. Inside there was an old game console and a framed photo of a dark mauve Vortian woman with a child that looked like a smaller copy of herself (especially since the child's squinting hid her slightly different coloured eyes) seated on her lap as she guided the child in how to play the same console that the photo now shared the box with.
Gaz carried both to the computer and set the photo on a shelf before plugging the console in and starting up the game. It was a simple game with a far cutesier aesthetic than she would normally choose, designed to be an easy introduction for beginners; far below her own skill level, and an early entry in the series on top of that, before it's signature mechanic had been introduced. But despite all that she was fond of it, not for the game itself but the memories it held.
Memories of watching her mother playing the game when she needed a break from a frustrating project and watching with fascination as the smallest movement of her fingers made the character run and jump around the screen. Of her mother noticing that fascination and showing her how to play, even though her hands were still too small to reach all the buttons at the time, and times when the two of them played it together. Even the bittersweet memories of going back to it on days when she...felt her absence most.
Alone in space with her thoughts and memories, Gaz allowed a rare warm smile to cross her face as she regarded the photo: All was right with the world.
So first of all I wanted to let you know that Iggins ended up in a different hospital than the one his mother works at, by the time she found out he was already awake, so you don't have to worry about her. Also I specified she worked at a hospital because apparently some people at the station objected when the episode was first made that people would...make assumptions about her job, so I decided to make a poke at them by giving her another job with late hours.
Besides that, this chapter has a bit of pay off I've been waiting months to get to; remember way back in chapter 6 when Dib notices how odd it is that Gaz specifies her next violent video game, implying the current one isn't? And how in chapter 9 it's mentioned that she's finally making progress on it? And in chapter 11 she says that it's gone into beta testing? All of that was the production of this one game, the long anticipated G-rated title she says she came here for in the first place (Don't worry about her potentially leaving, that's not the only reason she's there, even if she says otherwise) there's still one more bit of aftermath in a couple of chapters, too. Having actually followed the process of making a game I know it's much longer than the timeline we have here, but it's Gaz, and there's a different level of technology, so I feel I can be a little flexible.
Having said that, I've noticed that certain types of chapters seem to happen together, from the emotionally heavy chapters a little while ago, ones adapting particularly brutal ones now, a couple of ones with some typical childhood antics sprinkled in coming up.
As usual, I love hearing your thoughts, and I'd like to add for everyone to stay safe and I'll hopefully see you next week with something extra for the anniversary (^.^)
