Aviator - An Invader Zim story inspired by Redout.
Summary:
Zim becomes an unwilling racer pilot in the SRRL games that attract skilled aviators and ruthless speedsters from around the universe. He is a participant in the most lethal AG games on record where pilots don't make it past a day. Chained to the cockpit, made to serve his term, Zim begins to realize that he can't survive the speeds, let alone the competition.
Disclaimer:
I do not own the IZ characters or Redout. However this story and this idea is mine.
Warnings:
Character angst. Gore. Swearing.
Dib07: This chapter is for you Kenny, this was the least I could do to send you a mega thank you for your hard work! Your designs and sketches have given me so much! Put your feet up, grab your favorite drink and just enjoy!
Larrimeme
I totally agree! I think Zim would have been in for an *cough* interesting time if he'd accepted those lovely lavishers! Not that he would understand that kind of pleasure, but they sure would! XD Yeah things aren't going to be easy for the lil' angry bug. This is a really bad situation that's he's kinda stuck with. I always do these things to him. I need to be imprisoned cuz I'm never gonna stop! XD Thanks for the review! Hope you keep enjoying this random story that makes zero sense! XD
Guest
Thank you so much! I can but try! Who knows if it is any good. Maybe I am just crazy! I hope you are doing well too. It's awesome to have you in the community!
little side-note:
If you're new to my stories then I welcome you!
Please review, same as always, it might make new chapters appear faster!
Chapter Two: Octane Test
The pedestrians were pressing themselves against the barriers, pumping their fists and screaming out their adoring pilot's name which would most likely change halfway through the course of the race.
The Efreet's monstrous engines in front were permanent obstacles on the horizon; sour appendages that blocked some of the forward track. They levitated off the ground with the ship, enabling him to see at last part way under or over them depending on the angles and altitudes of track, ship and all other external forces. As preliminary systems ran diagnostics, the appendages rested on the magnetic track like oversized factory sculptures.
Kurtis was waving at the audience from the race track – the aliens seemed to like his Earthly alien paleness, scrubby cheeks and black tussled hair. Zim supposed that Kurtis was, to them, more like some rare and exotic animal. His ESA Lancer also hogged the limelight. It was in almost every pixelated image on giant hovering holographic screens, taking centre stage in all broadcasts, sponsorships and transmitted spectacles like some visually represented disease.
Since Zim had yet to yield any victories or even a pole position (he had not yet survived to the finish line) his porcelain Efreet was at the back of the line up. The always-in-last-place Buran was in front, taking up sixth position, while the ugly, detestable Lancer was all the way out in front, drinking in the glow only heroes and victors knew.
This did something to the Irken that rage couldn't touch, and the fact that it was a human drinking up the glamour only amplified the hate.
Claws strangled the slender rim of the reaction lever and speed shaft, the ploxum tether connecting wrist to ship barely rustling against the confining interior. He was aware of the sweat already clinging to his skin beneath the suffocating suit before the engines had even reached neutral heat levels, and his heart was something of a thudding out-of-control yo-yo.
He had kept the heavy diamona glass windshield open to stave off at least some of the binding claustrophobia for awhile, but the hot air of Anxanum's world was like dust to his throat and eyes, and did not give him the relief he was after.
Trying to stay calm, Zim watched the other pilots stroll around their ship, making last minute adjustments and visual inspections when really everything had already been smoothed over in the hangar. The racers were restless, the anticipation a fever one could not work out or relieve until the race had begun. As they sauntered around, Zim regarded his competitors with a snarl from the Efreet's open glass cockpit. His ship was so low that he was basically kissing the track, even when the engines were carrying him forwards. This only encouraged the resentment that he would always be the smaller, and his ship reinforced the stigma.
The ogre thing that had punched him in the club piloted the freighter-like Buran. When the ogre awkwardly climbed into the cockpit it was like he was trying to mount a cow, and the whole ship rocked.
A sleek, anthropomorphic bluish grey wolf-thing was standing by his bulky red and black Conqueror, surveying the others with distaste.
The last pilot who had flown the Asera had died – he had reportedly gone all over the place - and the torpedo ship with its glowing ball of energy hadn't faired so well either. Zim was confident they had replaced the ship with a shiny new one sporting the same colours. When the newest pilot appeared – late – his eyes widened in shock when he saw that the racer was a vortian. He was tall, wearing the shiny gold and pink colours of his team. One of his horns was broken. To a vortian their horns were as important as height was to an Irken.
Zim could only blink, feeling the resentment rise. Maybe he's the Kalian?
Though he tried to keep tabs on his other rivals, his attention kept falling back on that irritating Kurtis. He swaggered up to the barrier, calmly signing datapads and blowing kisses to an audience that consisted of creatures with three eyes and teeth larger than his head, and they were all trying to crowd closer, yelling and screaming their adoration in alien gibberish. They held banners and flags with the nefarious Lancer illustrated on almost every one.
When the shakes began to make their unwanted return, he squeezed his eyes shut in an effort to block out the thunderous noise of the crowd.
Survival had been more of an unlucky outcome in the course of his life.
Behind closed eyes, the memory returned. Dib had approached him with a towel, wrapping it around shoulders that looked as though they had been slashed with a whip. Zim had not been able to bring himself to explain the injuries, or at the very least confess them. He remembered the rain hitting the windowpanes like stones, with the soft warming glow from the lamp shining on his skin.
Opening his eyes, the next breath came easier, but when he looked to the mad throng of cheerers bracing the barrier, he saw her.
She was a human child, though it was hard to guess her age when he couldn't tell a three year old from a six year old. She stood amongst the legs of the crowd wearing a dirty old cloak that hid most of her face. Dark long hair went past her shoulders to her waist, and her legs were bare, showing a history of bruises and cuts. From the shadows of her cloak she stared straight at him from brown eyes.
The horn suddenly blew: a shrieking wail that endorsed about as much pain and panic as a bullet to the chest.
The racers eased or staggered their way into their awaiting cockpits, an accompanying mechanical whir of cockpits and windshields heavily closing. Despite the distraction, he looked for the girl in the crowd, but she had disappeared as if she was never there.
Trying to ignore the supplementary tug of the wrist-cuff and its vexing weight, he toggled a switch and the Efreet's cockpit softly closed, the seals successfully cementing, the oxygen readings showing full capacity.
He briefly considered merely sitting there, letting the other racers meet death head-on, but pride was the force keeping him in the seat, keeping that scream in check, and numbly gliding the lever into place as the giant engines began to levitate off the magnetic track. The whole thing lifted...
Panic was a hand crushing his heart.
He set magenta eyes on his adjacent opponents, wondering which one he should swerve into, engine-first.
The undying need to self-destruct wasn't exactly the best attribute for a racer's résumé.
One by one their engines gusted and blew, blinding fire tails birthing out of cold dark vacuums. Their ships responded almost like living things, lifting off the track by about eight feet, flaps, panels and auxiliary protrusions levelling out or extending for camber, lift, balance and stall speed.
Tracing a bony claw up the panel, dumping power into his engines, the great useless twin hulks in front lifted, transforming into levitating turbine cylinders that became the Efreet's extensions and augments. They were power houses. Like a fat albatross on land, they were lumbering trunks on the floor, but in the air they became unholy sound-barrier busting speed-killing juggernauts.
His heart rate accelerated; sweat warming his underarms and chest as he began to pull in shallow, quickening breaths. He was torn between fighting for his life, and doing everything he could to win.
The controls lit up, the power steady and waiting, the engines hot burning fucking furnaces that just wanted to go.
His head whirled from the glowing instrumentation.
Stabilisers on...
Augmented propeller operational...
Hull health 100%...
The dials were all slowly spinning anti-clockwise.
The digital countdown was presented in cutting black on a white holographic screen thirty feet above the track so that even the seventh racer could see it.
Everything kept going out of focus.
5...
4...
The numbers separated briefly, paling to grey. Zim angrily blinked away the fog.
3...
2...
MARKS!
He threw the throttle back and the Efreet became a bullet soaring from 0 to 800 km, the resulting shock shattering across ground and air, with the on-looking crowd diving for cover. He was thrown back in the seat, PAK a boulder digging into his back.
Nothing remained at the starting line but a wall of pink vapour.
The lead blanket was back, covering every inch of him and working its way deeper.
He flashed past the heavier Buran, the track still wide – still open to be comfortable...
The speed was an unwelcome pressure on every bone and organ, the hull the only protection he had from velocities that could cut metal in half.
Barriers zipped past in the foreground of his sight and mind – the horizon the immediate focus as he chased the fiery white tails of the upcoming Conqueror, though it was hard to distinguish exactly which class of ship was ahead when he could only view tornados of plasma that raged out of its rear engines.
His acceleration climbed with the speed – the pressure was crushing out his lungs and heart as he capitalized on the Sulha's sprint, breasting the Conqueror: the fleetingly short encounter driving red sparks between them as the Efreet's starboard engine took the brunt of the enemy's hull.
Zim channeled his rage and aggression into the Efreet, jerking her sharply to the right. The Conqueror overturned, its upside-down flight brief as it toppled over the track. Its brilliant azure POOF of fire was gone as Zim strafed round a cutting corner, the horizon disappearing behind a blind crest. The crest dropped away, taking his spooch with it.
Yanking on the lever too late to pitch up, the bottoms of his massive turbine engines clanked painfully on metal track, sparks raining across the windshield in millions of explosive fireflies.
Everything else save the horizon was a blur of whiplashing colour and figments second to illusions.
He pushed himself through the dizziness and screaming agony as he asphyxiated down the straights, hitting the boost as the Efreet rocketed like a meteor to speeds of 1800km. As a ship morphed into existence ahead, its engine plasma bright fiery blue indicators as he closed in, a grenade-burst of pain ruptured inside his head, sparks and night flowers exploding in his eyes.
I'm... just acclimatizing...
Push through...
He was beginning to think the windshield might not hold: that so much as a stone would shoot through the superline diamona glass like a bullet.
His insides were screaming. The strangling pressure, steadily increasing, locked him in its death-hold. Granite was on his lungs. Black lines zipped angrily in his eyes.
Who knew he could lay waste to the laws of physics when the Sulha basically transformed into a Speed God, going faster than the eye could catch without somehow burning into a molten ball? The feeling translated back to him through the interior as the hull contracted and sung. The Efreet was in agony, but he kept on pushing, the speedometer climbing to the 2200's...
The euphoria was a drug... he felt unstoppable...
Something flashed by – it could have been a ghost or a ship – the Efreet's sensory triggers caught something before it vanished.
Glancing down a moment at the dials to see his position in the race was too tempting when taking his eyes off the track could cost him his life. Even blinking was risky.
Fourth place...
The upcoming corner, a soft, gentle swerve for those going at a comfortable 60km became a ship-destroying hairpin. He hit the brakes, the Sulha cutting back just as he slammed sideways into it, the hull cheese-grating along the rim.
'Hull Integrity 62%.' The computer alert barely cut through the migraine as the Efreet ungracefully swerved round the remaining bend. Glistening bands of burning metal and bits of black chassis lay about the track. The Lunare hadn't handled that particular bend so well either, it flagged ahead of him like a cumbersome duck with two broken wings.
The velocity as he passed knocked the ship into a spin.
Third place...
His skull might as well have had the width of paper, the agony resonated around inside like he had a clanging bell in there.
The dials weren't that crisp, pretty green anymore. Every reading was sliding to an unhappy orange as the computer registered hull damage, overheating, stress on the stabilisers, with smoke charring out from one of the regulators inside the starboard engine.
He pushed on, throwing down the accelerator, head smacking back, the pain easing to something numb, forgotten. All the weight seemed to lift, evaporate, and he wondered if he hadn't already died some thirty seconds ago.
The next turn was tight, winding down and up through a tubular section that was something of a hectic zig-zag. He had to decide there and then how to take it, trying to measure when to push out without hitting the barrier or slowing down and having his rivals gain on him. He did not like the feel of the craft swinging out behind him, losing that second to other forces beyond his control.
The sleek and honeyed glow of the Koeniggswerth was a glittery drop of metal on the distance. Without having to free up his concentration or his claws the helmet dropped down over his head, shielding his eyes from both the alien sun beating through the windshield and the koen's tapering plasma tails that left flashing afterimages in his eyes. As the Sulha whipped up the track like a bullet, he let the engines eat up the turbo fuels, giving them the power they hungered for.
The jump came out of nowhere. The track simply ended at an angle that was barely much of a slant.
Bad steering and bad jumps were often caused by oversteering and overcorrecting. An anxious pilot who was just a little too OCD on adjusting their trajectory almost always had a bad time.
He took the jump, ship angrily shooting off it, the track dropping away. Easing the throttle, keeping the power to the stern, he fought to keep the engines and nose of the craft raised – he could not afford to plummet – when the g-forces returned, the weight was a boulder pushing him into oblivion. He began to wonder if he could survive under this much pressure. His eyes burned as if they were being rung through with boiling hot needles.
The koen shot past him somewhere while he was in the air – like two bullets passing on opposite ends of the spectrum.
The track opened out in welcome, the silver line of metal looking deceptively narrow and small from above. He dipped the Efreet's engines to meet it, trying to time the landing, adjusting the rearward engines with a brush of a claw as miles of distance rapidly closed to nothing.
Meeting the track as much as hitting it had something snap in his chest – his body little more than a ragdoll in a harness that had become seemingly incapable of supporting him.
That... that really... hurt...
The pulsating pinks of the PAK brightened in concordance with a loud inner whirring as if he was plugged to a washing machine.
The track eclipsed the horizon as he sped over the next bend, the next straight. The other racers were things of blurry interventions, coming and going like apparitions of memory.
When the white and red tails of the ESA appeared, a slow and wary smile eased Zim's lips into dented curves.
The ESA Lancer was a sculpted nautical rocket that took corkscrew turns and loops with almost perfect precision. The hull was as immaculate as it had been in the line-up, with beautiful arcs of nova-blue and pink cresting its pathway from the engines.
Can you see me coming, you bastard?!
His looming presence must have given Kurtis some unease. As the smooth curving aperture of the track took them higher, the Lancer jolted harder to port, taking off metal that the shielding struggled to ameliorate.
Soaked in sweat, rage the energy keeping him afloat, his eyes remained on the steady dot of the ESA.
His focus started to double, colours and track taking on a psychedelic sheen.
The track opened into a wide, comfortable straight, and though the Lancer took this opportunity to apply its boost, his Efreet exploded forwards, the cockpit rattling to the tearing stresses of gravity and heat.
The track sharply closed up again, allowing an artery-room's worth of maneuvering.
The faster he went, the harder it became to react to corners, let alone steer. His handling skills and reflexes were the only thing keeping him from becoming just another pretty inferno. Sometimes you literally had to pinball sections, wall-bouncing from one barrier to the next when speed paled caution.
Kurtis took the corner in a tidy arc, his piloting skills causing Zim's envy to climb. The distance between them was closing. It was harder to keep steady, to focus, when wild emotion threatened to overtake his pathological concentration.
Every reaction was that to the ship's, every movement computerized as levers were pulled, the reaction shaft snapping left, his body belonging to the ship as he closed on Kurtis's wingtails.
The adrenaline was pure: molten fire the anger and stimulus that kept him immune to pain and exhaustion. Sparks of colour, like rain, fell over his windshield when the starboard bulk of Sulha engine nudged the Lancer's tail fin. The human's craft seemed to roll, the nose hitting the track, metal spinning off in bright streaks.
Triumph was purest relief, but anger and adrenaline were the hounds chasing his limits. Losing control now would ruin him, but trying to rein in his vendetta was almost impossible. He kept aligned with the Lancer as both ducked along the bending track, treading sparks, both ships boiling torpedoes of speed.
Only when the crack grew from a star-shaped splinter to a long, arching line across his windshield did Zim happen to notice it. He tried not to stare, not to let it distract him as he levelled his gaze on his rival, but the enlarging fissure grew harder to ignore.
The finish line! Where's the finish line?
For all he knew the track zig-zagged around the whole planet, or looped around one massive region.
The Lancer settled along his starboard side as they raced side by side. For all the speed they were going, each pilot looked to the other as if they weren't moving at all.
From his visor's periphery he could just make out the human's slender form in the cockpit.
The finish line lay just ahead past a curving slope, the giant white holographic symbols prominent bands and stripes so that any alien of any language would know by sight what it meant.
He's going to shove me into the barrier!
Pushing ahead did not allow him an escape, the Lancer kept pace.
Pulling back meant sacrificing his position.
He considered jerking the Sulha's massive engines into the enemy ship, and briefly considered how much damage that would do to them both.
Kurtis would not pass up this chance to annihilate him.
As the ESA leaned in, the ship a tortured colour of dents and scars, Zim pulled on the lever, the Sulha's engines narrowly avoiding the Lancer's wing, and Kurtis smacked into the barrier where once there was a ship and he ricocheted, losing control, speed, with Zim flashing past. The finish line reared up to meet him, the crowd a multitude of ants in the nearing distance.
From the rearview monitor the bow of the Lancer filled the screen. He was gaining.
The bump to his rear-end nearly made him lose control. Quickly oversteering corrected the Efreet's trajectory.
The finish line flashed past.
For a moment he continued to soar forwards, numbed from feeling very much of anything. There was only the acoustic thunder of his heart, which didn't seem to have any rhythm to it.
When the track's magnesium began to gradually slow the ships, easing the g-forces on the pilots in a similar and gradual way divers came to the surface to avoid decompression sickness, the world began to appear again. Swirls of gold and russet turned to sloping hills and mountains of an alien desert beyond the track. He slowly eased the lever down, letting the speed drop. Only when the cutting velocity of screaming wind had eased did he hear the excessive popping and crackling of the Sulha's forward engines. Rifts of whitish pink steam wafted out of cooking components.
The ESA drifted comfortably alongside him.
Keeping sweaty sopping gloves on the lever, visor lifting away, he looked over to see a livid Kurtis staring back at him through the ESA's windshield. Alighting his gaze on the opening horizon, past the huge crack strung out across the glass, he realized he'd won.
He started to laugh, but the pain in his chest made it arduous to so much as breathe.
The Sulha eventually rattled to a stop, but for Zim he was still flying. The sensation was still there, and he was dizzy with it. Sparks were darting flakes in his eyes. He would follow their ghostly passage, hypnotized.
The massive engines popped and smoked. He wondered if they'd detonate before long.
Kurtis was suddenly outside, leering over his cockpit as if his legs had sunken into the track. He started banging his fist on the diamona glass. "Open up, new blood!"
He lazily toggled a switch with the tip of a claw and the glass of his coffin loudly cranked open in protest. Steam lifted out with it, and even Kurtis had to barrel back from the exhalation of heat.
Zim found it faintly amusing as the human slapped frantically at the air as if he was being attacked by a swarm of bees.
There was a loud buzzing. Maybe there was a cloud of bees. Or maybe it was the other surviving racers coming to a stop near or around them...
I... I get to go home!
I get to...
...go...
Kurtis's shadow enveloped his tiny form. A pale hand reached out and started to roughly unbuckle his wet and sticky harness.
"Don't t-touch me..." His words were a lisping, drunken drawl. When the human did not react to his voiceless command, a fear reached in, sharper than ice. As the buckles snapped back, freeing him, he looked up at the human's sharp, grey eyes. "N-No..!"
Kurtis grabbed a sopping gloved hand and bodily hauled him out as if his weight counted for nothing. Legs and arms unable to work, he careered over the cockpit, seeing sand below. His wrist caught in the cuff tethering him to the cockpit, leaving his legs to dangle above sand-bleached track.
"What's a prisoner like you doing winning with a Sulha?" The human's voice wasn't as silky smooth as it was last night.
Zim blinked at him and the white sparks flying through his vision like snow. The floor was tilting on a slow and cantered spin as he hung against the Sulha. "F-Fuck you...!"
There was a clatter of boots as someone else arrived. The Irken tried to look round his twisted shoulder to see the vortain suddenly appear. "What do we do with him?" The vortian gruffly asked. "He nearly killed Bass."
Zim looked from one to the other, unable to hide his fear. He could feel the heat of the Efreet cooking through the hull. His clothing was stuck to it.
Where was the crowd? Weren't there supposed to be cameras? Onlookers? A public fucking parade?!
He went to tug against the cuff, claws haplessly trying to loosen it from a fracturing wrist. "W-Wat are y-you d-doing?! You d-don't kno' who I am! I'm... I'm Zim! ... Elite...!"
"What are you blabbing, hmm? We're not gonna do anything..." Said Kurtis. "...so long as you lose the next race. We can't have you getting in the way."
"L-Lose? Why would I want to..."
Kurtis threw a fist into his cheekbone, the tops of his knuckles smashing into his eye. He shrieked, the pain a hammer to his skull.
They stood away a moment as if to better observe him as hot, stinging fluids spilled down his cheek. The sky had become a weeping plethora of watercolors streaming down.
He could feel those same rough and callous hands working at the cusp hooked to his swelling wrist.
There was nowhere to go. Walling himself away in his mind was the only way he could escape.
When the tether snapped free, he was only vaguely aware of it. With heavy hands gripping his shoulders he was shoved forwards on weak twigs for legs; away from the cooking ship and to a dark pool of shadow where he was then roughly prompted to sit down against a rock.
The racers could soon hear the media platoon arriving: cameras equipped with jetpacks and levitation devices hurrying to the location to film and broadcast the successful racers to the awaiting public. At once the other racers raised their hands in greeting. Ship-like vehicles called the Cyclones began to appear carrying team representatives and medtechs. When they parked up, they fanned out around the boiling and steaming ships in a semi-circle. They stepped forwards, flashing their devices while holographic screens transmitted everything they captured.
Zim lifted a heavy head, trying to see out of one eye.
The holographic screens began to fill with his purple and black Sulha alongside the words WINNER running along the lower half.
"Best race yet!" Went the first representative with something of a microphone in-hand. His PAK was slower translating the garble, words coming to him intermittently after a five second delay. As they crowded close, not seeming to mind the stink of plasma fumes and sweat, Zim stared blankly at nothing in particular as he floated.
Everything was out of focus.
"I can't believe it! The Lancer never loses!"
"Did you see how the Irken took that curve!"
"The ESA and Sulha...! Racing side by side!"
"I g-get to go h-home, right?" He plaintively asked, spewing something that felt like fluid. Kurtis, who had been standing off to the side, suddenly turned round to look at him as if for the first time.
The media representatives seemed not to have heard. His antennae were being clubbed with too much noise, and not for the first time he felt like passing out. They kept talking and cheering, their bodiless jaunts and motions becoming a sea of pain.
Easing himself up, jerkily finding his feet, he suddenly wanted to be alone.
The sky phased in and out, stars that shouldn't be there were everywhere he looked.
He shuffled forwards, one arm braced across his chest. His eye had swollen shut which made walking even more difficult. The ground always seemed to be shifting, like he was on a rapidly moving conveyor belt. Motes of snow drifted here and there. They seemed to be creating a path across the sand. As he looked, the snow parted to reveal a streetlamp in the fog.
Kurtis crossed the sand in two easy strides to catch up to him. "Hey...? Where are you going? There's nothing but desert that way."
He watched Zim flounder onwards precariously in a broken stoop, one muted eye gazing dreamily ahead. He seemed destined to keep going.
"Hey! New blood! I'm talking to you!" He went to grab him and snap him back round when the Irken's legs started to fold, watery eye fluttering closed just before he spilled to the sand sideways. Kurtis dropped by his side, knees cutting into rock beneath millimeters of sand. "Hey! Come on, get up, Snarky." He rocked a diminutive shoulder, feeling the heat rising from inside the fabric. The strange metal dome on its back was a whirring, vibrating thing that sounded like it was seconds away from exploding. Blood stained the sand beneath the racer.
His shouts for a medtech echoed across the expanse as the media started to crowd round.
Dib07: I had fun with this! Not sure where this is headed and if I'll write another chapter, but it was an experience! Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed!
RIP Zim!