((Part two is done after a few delays. No mushy stuff yet, guys, but I'm getting there. I hope you like and, as always, R+R is welcome))
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Zim shivered in the chilly morning air as he stood on the corner awaiting the arrival of the bus. The Game Slave's cardboard package dug uncomfortably into his back from where he had stuffed it into his knapsack along with his other daily requirements and his allottment of homework for the night. Getting the new video game system hadn't been easy...those clerk creatures certainly acted odd every time he tried to leave with his chosen items. Something about forgetting to pay. Idiot humans. At the very least, this would hopefully keep Gaz quiet and out of his way though he loathed having anything to do with her, let alone doing her a favor.
A loud drone in the distance caught his attention as the bulky yellow form of the bus appeared on the horizon. "Finally." he grumbled. It screeched to a halt in front of him and the door slid open. The first thing the irken saw, as he did every morning, was its driver...who in all appearance was a human man with the exception of the fact that (s)he wore ghastly amounts of cosmetics and had somehow squeezed its bulk into a canvas skirt that showed off a pair of massive hairy legs. His first few days of skool when he had ridden this strange form of transit, he had spent much time debating on the creature's gender.
"You gettin' on or what??" Ms. Kathy barked, sounding every bit like a hardened drill seargent. Zim, startled, scampered up the stairs and scanned the rows of half-sleeping worm babies, seeking a place to sit. He felt sick as he saw that the only vacancy seemed to be beside Dib, who already was leering at him accusingly. He shuddered visibly with disgust. Yup, it was going to be another one of those days, apparently. "SIDDOWN!!" the driver shrieked. "Let's get this crate rollin'!! Think I spent fifty years in the armed service and fifty grand on a sex change to haul you little maggots around???"
Grudgingly, having to push himself every step of the way, Zim approached Dib's seat. As he moved to sit, however, Dib slapped a hand noisily onto the green vinyl cushion, glaring at him.
"Sorry Zim." he glowered. "This spot's for Earthlings ONLY."
"YOU MOVE OVER AND LET'IM SIT, YOU FOUR-EYED LITTLE FREAK!!!!" Ms. Kathy ordered, shaking a meaty finger at Dib in the front mirror. Reflexively, Dib scooted as far over to the window as he could and Zim took a seat, unshouldering his knapsack and placing it in his lap. Once he was situated, he cast a cursory look around the bus...but didn't see Gaz anywhere.
"Figures...now I have to haul this wretched electronic human pacifier around with me all day." Zim muttered.
"What?" Dib snapped, glaring at him. There was a crazy hunted look in his eye...as there always was. It was as though the human feared that the entire universe was planning on destroying him and him alone.
"Where is your sister?" Zim inquired. Dib's eyes instantly narrowed, his black hair wet and slick against his forehead from his hurried shower he had taken before rushing out the door that morning and increasing his ominous appearance.
"Why...?" he hissed. Zim cocked a brow at him curiously.
"I just...wanted to know." he answered, his hands fidgeting awkwardly. The last thing he needed was Dib to start another of his shrieking tangents in the middle of the bus where he'd have a captive audience. Dib looked skeptical a moment.
"My father is driving her to school today. Fathers do that sometimes." he answered defensively. "Not like your father who is obviously a rudimentary robot with faulty circuits!!!" Zim cringed, ducking a bit in his seat.
"Will you shut up??" Zim growled, glaring at the boy.
"The truth hurts, doesn't it Zim?? And pretty soon, I won't be the only one who'll be able to see through your trickery!" Dib vowed. "Its not much longer for you, ALIEN!!!!!" he shrieked.
"SHADDAP!!!!!" Ms. Kathy bellowed, effectively silencing Dib's tirade....and for the rest of the ride to school, the two adversaries held a silent staredown, both wordlessly promising the other's downfall.
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Gaz stood at the bus loading zone at the front of the school, her hand shoved into her jacket's front pockets to hide the fact that they were twitching. She had never known that one could go through "Video Game Withdrawl" and needed a virtual fix more than ever. Before she had left for school that morning, she had packed in as much time in front of the television with a joystick in her hands as she could...hense the reason she had been late in getting ready for school and why her father had dropped her off on his way to the laboratory.
Any minute now, the bus would be pulling in containing Dib that that moron Zim. "If he forgot," she said aloud "He's not going to live to see recess." As though on cue, another bus pulled in behind the ones that had already let most of their cargo onto the sidewalk. Gaz peered at the red number in the front window. "R106". Their bus. As the doors slid open and students began to file out, she gritted her teeth and waited.
Dib got off first, spying Gaz standing nearby expectantly and hurrying toward her. "Gaz, get to class! Hurry! The alien was asking about you on the bus!! I warned you this would happen, you're his next target!!!!" he seized her shoulders imploringly. For a long moment time seemed to freeze and then Gaz idly looked down at her brother's hands firmly gripping her.
"You're touching me." she growled. Dib jerked his fingers away as though Gaz's jacket had suddenly become scalding hot. "Where's Zim?" she grumbled. Dib's jaw dropped at her query. Had she gone completely crazy? No...Zim must have already gotten to her. Yes that was the only possible explanation. The alien was brainwashing his sister even as they spoke.
"Ahem." Dib knew the voice before he even turned around.
"Zim." Dib growled at the alien. "You stay away from my sister!! Stay away or I'll---" he was cut off as Gaz rudely shoved him onto the pavement, approaching Zim and assuming a menacing stance.
"Well?" she asked, hands clenching in her pockets. Zim leered at her a moment before unshouldering his knapsack and placing it on the pavement. After struggling with the contents a moment, he produced the slightly dented Game Slave box and thrust it at Gaz.
"Here." he sneered. She accepted it quickly, checking the box to ensure it was, indeed, just like her last one and not some cheap knockoff like the Thumbmaster 2000 and tore it open.
"Thank you." she replied with just as much venom as she tore the Game Slave out of the shrink wrapped plastic it had been sealed in and turned it over to check the battery hatch. "Its empty." she stated coldly. It took all of Zim's willpower to not shriek in utter frustration and claw the wretched human's eyes out. "How am I supposed to play it with no batteries?"
"YOU....didn't say you needed batteries." Zim growled through gritted teeth. He was trembling all over now...and not trying to hide it.
"Well duh, Einstein." Gaz retorted. Beneath Zim's green skin she could see a purple flush beginning to show, and inwardly smirked. She wondered how much further she could push the alien until he exploded at her. Dib needed a considerately larger amount of needling until he blew up....but when one factored in that he was easily terrified of any sort of anger Gaz showed toward him, that wasn't surprising. "What are you? Some kind of idiot?"
"You....you...." Zim clenched his eyes shut, trying to center himself. If he screamed, that would draw attention to himself from everyone else. Just what he didn't need. But something was about to come out of his mouth and he wasn't able to stop it. "FIYAH!!!!!!" he shrieked, waving his arms wildly before turning and storming away, up the stairs, and into the skool building. Zim's substitution of a curse for an explosion of gibberish made a bout of snickers rise in Gaz's throat, but she quickly swallowed them again, allowing herself a triumphant smirk before setting her backpack down, unzipping it, and taking out a plastic sandwich bag that contained her emergency stash of batteries.
Dib simply shook his head as he watched his sister equip her new portable game system and then select a game from her collection and switch it on as if nothing had happened at all. What was going on?
"Gaz, what in God's name are you doing??" Dib demanded.
"Trying to beat level five." she replied non-chalantly.
"He's the enemy!!" her brother implored. "And you're sending him out to get you toys???"
"Uh huh." she muttered.
"Di.....!!!" he squeaked in frustration as his hand collided with his forehead, painfully jabbing the bridge of his glasses into his nose. "You've gone crazy!" he declared. Gaz lifted her pencilled eyes from the screen of her Game Slave to spare him a momentary glare. "That's right!! You and ALL OF YOU!!!!" he yelled to the heavens. "Someday you'll ALL see that I was right!!! THESE ALIENS DON'T WANT TO BUY US TOYS! THEY WANT TO OWN US!!!!"
His rant over, Dib looked up to notice that several random students had paused on their way to class to stare blankly at him and that Gaz had disappeared. He turned on his heel in time to see her disappearing into the skool, still ensconsed in her game. He sniffed in annoyance, looking at the sidewalk and kicking at a stray pebble. He'd show them all, somehow. His ears buzzed as the school bell screamed, alerting everyone that they should already be in class. Sighing, Dib trotted up the stairs, his trenchcoat trailing behind him as he did so.
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"Today, class, I would like to open with the topic of modern music. And how it slowly DESTROYING our culture." Ms. Bitters stated, a tape recorder held in her emaciated claws. "Let's start by looking at a popular artist amongst you children....Strange Bob Raruvic." a scattering of cheers went up from the class's attendance. "SILENCE!!!" the cheers went abruptly silent. The ancient woman crossed the room, taking no steps at all but rather eerily hovering toward the electical outlet and plugging the recorder in. "Now listen closely." she instructed, setting the machine down on her desk and pressing Play.
Oh he believes he can flyyyy
At least he does whenever he gets high
Gets on the table and I hear him say
"I'll spread my wings and fly away!"
He believes he can soar...as he runs into the sliding door
He believes he can---
Ms. Bitters cut off the nasal parody of an otherwise well-known melody. "A 'hilarious' poke at a song that, even when its not being made fun of, contributes NOTHING to society." she snorted. "But...when played backwards..." she prodded a finger at another button.
You're all DOOMED!
All of you!
Yes, even YOU!!!
DOOOOOM!!!
Doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom etc.
None of the students had the nerve to state that the backwards "recording" sounded uncannily like their teacher as she let it run, seating herself at her desk and burying her crooked nose in her leatherbound copy of Dante's Inferno, satisfied that she had accordingly traumatized her students for the day.
Zim sighed softly, rolling his eyes behind his contact lenses as he quietly opened his desk and slipped out a piece of notebook paper and took his pencil out of its metal cradle at the top of the desktop and began to doodle a frighteningly accurate sketch of himself standing atop an iron cage containing Dib and laughing. "Soon..." he promised himself. A world wasn't conquered in a day, after all. He tapped the eraser against his jaw, casting a look around the room. Most of the children were staring straight ahead with a horrified expression as the foretelling of doom continued to drone on the tape recorder...a few had fallen asleep, and then, as always, there was Dib.
The earth boy, while pretending to read his Biology textbook, was staring fixedly at Zim as though he was expecting him to sprout another head at any moment. Zim shot him a glare out of the corner of his eye, scowling icily as Dib mouthed the words "I'll destroy you". The irken cast a look at the clock...another ten minutes until recess. It would be a stretch, but he decided he could go that long without exploding as he returned to his "art".
His next sketch manifested itself into a picture of Dib, smoke coming from a gaping wound in his head as a scrawled version of himself held a blaster and grinned insanely. After a moment of thought, Zim smirked and began to draw a figure standing on the other side of Dib, this one planting a laser blast directly in the bespectacled boy's hind end. There was only one other person in the skool building who hated Dib more than he did and that person was none other than his younger sister.
He hurriedly scribbled in a pair of dark eyes and a sadistic smile. Before long, Gaz stood holding the other blaster. Perhaps she WAS a foul earth beast, but they shared that one thing in common. He pondered folding it up and tossing it onto Dib's desk to see the reaction he'd get but decided against it.
"Well! Enjoying yourself, are you?" Dib's sarcastic voice sounded from directly behind him. Zim cringed and wheeled around in his seat to face his rival. "Oh, and what have we here?" he inquired, making a grab at Zim's desktop and successfully abducting the drawing. Zim made no move to stop him, narrowing his eyes to as much of slits as his lenses would allow. "I don't know what planet you come from, but us earthlings consider something like this as a threat!" Dib snapped, disgusted at both the lack of talent in the piece and fact his sister had been included in it.
"So?" Zim snarled.
"So I wonder what the principal would have to say about something like this?" Dib said with mock-thoughtfulness as he folded the paper in half and scratched the side of his head with it idly. "Hmm....oh, I know! They'd call the police!" he glowered at the alien. "And they'd lock you away! And then they'd HAVE to listen to me! And then you know what, Zim? They'll cut apart your brainmeats!!!"
"HA!! You and your police insects don't scare me!" Zim declared, standing. Dib felt his grip tighten around the paper, crushing it in his hand as the two adversaries sized one another up. And then...lifting the tension from the classroom, the recess bell sounded and children, like hairless lemmings, poured out of the building and onto the playground. Zim, grudgingly turning away from Dib, walked stiffly out of the room and outside. He had almost wished Dib had thrown a punch so he'd have an excuse to attack him and possibly end his problems with the earth boy then and there.
"The enemy will show his weakness by dealing the first blow." an old Irken proverb resounded in his head in a sing-song voice. He recalled it was one of Tallest Purple's favorite phrases as he and Red had overseen the troops' training in the previous years. Zim, being a creature of immediate action, had often tossed this particular bit of advice to the hellfires when the first sign of action reared its head. However, this being a strange planet, he was drawing all he could from his training.
He paused at the doorway to the playground, peering outside to ensure that it wasn't raining or that there were no nearby puddles that someone could carelessly send splashing in his direction. Satisfied that it was safe, he ventured into the sunlight. Nearby, some children were engaged in a game of 'Crack The Whip' and a bit further down, a game of dodgeball was taking place. Zim, having realized early on that he wasn't an athletic sort, headed for the swing set. At least there, his organs weren't in danger of becoming putty from an incoming ball. The swings were mostly empty, he found, as he struggled into the first one he came to.
"What do YOU want?" a familiar voice inquired, accompanied by electronic blips and tinny music. This time, Zim didn't even turn, already knowing who occupied the swing beside him. This day, quite frankly, was starting to get on his nerves. Being ping ponged between the two siblings' ill will toward him was getting to be too much of a bad thing.
"I have a self-destruct button." he stated jovially with a large false smile, as though he was simply commenting on the weather. "Say another word, and I'll grab onto you and press it."
"Yeah right." Gaz muttered, drawing in her breath in an angered hiss as her player fell just short of reaching the other side of a gap and tumbled to his death.
"Do not mock my button!" he growled, rolling up his sleeve to show the module with the tiny red button in the middle of it and poising his finger over it. Gaz lifted her head, simply looking at him for a long moment.
"Are you always such a dweeb?" she inquired, making a disgusted noise as she returned to her game. Zim, rising to the bait, smirked a bit.
"I don't know. Are you always so smelly?" he retorted. Gaz, not expecting him to have come up with a comeback at all, blinked twice to show her dismay but did nothing more as she continued to play.
"Slimebucket." she shot back.
"Human filth." Zim answered non-chalantly.
"Geekoid." she returned automatically.
"Purple-backed rat creature." the irken stated, pretending to buff his gloved nails on the front of his shirt.
"Creep." Gaz had audibly put her game slave on pause and was now glaring at Zim.
"Near-sighted Zeeglark."
"Is that your face, or did your neck throw up something?" Gaz inquired bitterly. Zim's mind stuttered, having not been prepared for a question. After a moment of trying to get his train of thought back on its rails, he gave up and sat in defeated, angry silence pumping his spindly legs and attempting to get his swing to go.
"Faulty human technology..." he sighed, shaking his head in distaste.
"The X button on this Game Slave sticks." Gaz stated.
"Ask me if I care, Gaz. Just....go on, humor me. Ask me." he urged sarcastically.
"Feh. Is THIS why Dib wants to see you field dressed by rabid gophers?" she asked.
"Do I look like I know what's going on in that inpenetrable skull of his?" Zim snorted.
"At least that's one thing we can agree on." Gaz answered. "Sometimes I just want to wrap my hands around his neck---"
"---and strangle him till he turns ten shades of blue." Both Zim and Gaz paused as they realized they had stolen one another's sentences.
"Hm. Guess we DO think alike." she stated, sounding not-at-all interested and continuing to play her game as Zim suspiciously checked the back of his head and neck for a neuron transmitter someone may have planted on him when his guard was down. It was bad enough he was suspected, he didn't need to be broadcasting his thoughts to the humans too. Not finding one, he slid out of the swing, all the while eyeing Gaz out of the corner of his eye suspiciously. "Where're you going?"
"What do you care?" he asked flatly.
"I don't." she shrugged, her eyes never leaving the screen of the Game Slave. "I'd move if I were you." she added half-heartedly. Before Zim could ask why, a soccerball slammed into the back of his head, making red stars momentarily dance before his eyes. "Idiot." she grumbled as Zim collapsed on his face and the owner of the ball tromped up behind the fallen irken to reclaim it.
"Is he okay??" a voice called from the field.
"Yeh, he's fine." the beefy kid who had approached grunted, grabbing the ball up beneath one pudgy arm and examining Zim. "Its that green kid." he noted.
"Oh. He's a wuss! Kick him!" the voice called back.
"Heh....alright." he smirked, drawing back his foot and planting it firmly in Zim's side.
"YARGH!!!!" Zim yelped, scrambling to his hands and knees. Gaz's eyes shifted upward to watch as the kid retreated with the soccer ball and then to Zim to see if he'd get up. He seemed alive....good enough. She unpaused her game and went back to firing at a rather large dragon that was guarding the entrance to the Faerie Realm.
"Die..." she willed it mentally as her player jumped, just narrowly avoiding one of the beast's acid wads. One more shot should just about do it....she poised her thumb over the V button, ready to fire as soon as the dragon opened its mouth again. The shot was never fired....in fact, the Game Slave was jolted straight out of her hands and onto the ground as something jostled her body. Gaz watched in silent horror as the battery hatch popped free and the two Double A's clattered onto the pavement. Ruined. She'd have to start all the way back from The Gate Of The Ancients!! Fury burning in her narrow eyes, she looked downward to see Zim clinging to her ankle, eyes squeezed shut and a pained grimace on his face.
"My....my flinnadon...." he groaned, clutching at the right side of his lower belly. If he was going to count his blessings, at least his squeedly-spooch and eeronz felt intact. Instead of helping, Gaz gave her leg a violent kick, sending him sprawling on his injured front onto the sidewalk as she hopped off of the swing and landed squarely on the irken's back, which made a most unsavoury crunching noise.
"You really must not have a will to live." she growled, hopping off of his body and stooping to place the batteries back into her Game Slave and ignoring the labored grunts nearby as Zim drew himself wearily to his knees.
"Ennngghhh..." Zim groaned, taking a deep rasping breath.
"I mean, do you know how long its going to take me to get back to that stupid dragon? At LEAST five minutes." she scoffed, clicking the battery hatch closed again, switching her game back on and reseating herself on her swing. Though she tried her best to pretend that she couldn't hear Zim's pained noises for the next several minutes, eventually she found that they were effecting her gameplay. At length, she had finally reached her limit and put Warriors Of Panic on pause. "Fine. If you're gonna be a baby about it..." she muttered as she slid out of her swing once more, seizing Zim's impossibly thin upper arm and dragging him behind her along the pavement.
She decided she'd drop him at the nurse's station and from then on, he'd be their problem. At this point, frankly, she'd do anything to get him to leave her alone. Who knew? Maybe she'd still have a few salvagable minutes of recess afterward. Several children favored her with an unsavory look as she meandered up the stairs, Zim's limp form making a meaty thwap on each step. He made a protesting grunt as she heaved the skool door with her shoulder and dragged him inside. "Stop complaining." she snapped. "We're almost there."
Eight hallways later, they arrived at the nurse's office, more commonly referred to as "the quarantine unit" by the students as Gaz kicked the door open, hauling Zim in behind her. The receptionist, a girl who looked freshly out of high school and incredibly bored, sat idly playing with a plastic snowglobe.
"Yeah?" she inquired, sparing Gaz a cursory look before returning to watching the bits of white plastic drift through the water.
"Yeah. I think this kid's brain is broken." the violet-haired girl said, pointing at Zim's inert form on the floor with a shrug.
"Uh huh..." the receptionist muttered without even looking at the fallen irken, giving the globe a shake. "Take him down to the cot room. There's a nurse around here somewhere, I think." Gaz gave a put-out sigh and grabbed Zim by the ankles, dragging him across the tiles with a soft hissing sound of his clothing against the floor. Luckily, he wasn't very heavy...otherwise she would have left him out on the playground for the crows to eat...if they liked alien meat, of course.
As she passed the threshold, Gaz worked her grip under Zim's arms, trying to wrangle him into her arms so that she could deposit him onto a cot. After struggling a moment, she managed to heave him most of the way onto one of them on his back, one leg draped limply over the side. Gaz stood a moment, regarding him silently before quietly switching her Game Slave on again.
"You owe me one, Zim." she stated flatly as her game fired up and she left him behind. The bell signalling recess's end sounded shrilly as she quickened her pace just a bit. Mr. Crowson, her teacher, was known for threatening tardy students with "the belt". While none of them had actually SEEN the belt, they had heard about it. It was nine feet long, eight feet wide, and it had hooks on it, that would tear the meat from your body. No one had been late to Mr. Crowson's class in over twelve years, suffice to say.
Shortly after Gaz had left, a round red-headed lady bustled into the cot room, carrying a metal tray of various medical impliments with her. "Oh dear!" she exclaimed, upon seeing Zim. "And what happened to YOU, little boy? You weren't fighting, were you??" she sighed, shaking her head as she began a custom check of his body, feeling his belly and chest for broken bones.
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Zim didn't know how long he had laid there floating in his own personal sea of agony, but he had been awakened by the choking stench of some foul stinging liquid that the overfed nurse beast had applied to a scrape on his forehead he had acquired during Gaz's "escort". Rubbing Alcohol, she had called it. After several minutes of bickering with her that he was fine and that there was no need in the known universe to phone his parents, he had been given a slip of paper admitting him back to class and a grape lollipop.
He was still sore from his manhandling, but was sure he'd shake it off by tomorrow at the latest as he shifted the lollipop into his cheek pocket, letting the too-sweet grape flavor wash over his snake-like tongue. It hurt slightly to walk...the incident on the playground had likely bruised a few muscles, but had done no real damage to his bones or organs. That was a relief. The last thing he needed was to have to delay his mission due to being dehabilitated while his body regenerated a ruined innard.
As he turned down the hallway leading to his classroom, the irken's thoughts shifted to Gaz. Tallest, how he disliked her sometimes. She resided in a very awkward place on his list of people..somewhere between a sworn enemy with her bursts of rage and a kindred spirit in the way that both of them hated all of humanity. He knew that if he had really wanted to, he could have refused to retrieve a new Game Slave for her after her other one had been destroyed. It was general intimidation and the knowledge that Gaz possessed the power to beat the hell out of anyone who opposed her despite their size, he supposed.
It was too bad she was a human, really....someone like her could have done well in the irken army. Bah, that was foolspeak. She was a human, just like the rest of them. A clump of rancid meat to be wasted. There was no way she could ever be held in as high a regard as an irken of any sort...not even the shortest! Zim shook his head at his own foolery as he arrived outside of Ms. Bitters' door and entered.
"--the point of this lesson being, that if Jacob here was to mistake this beaker of arsenic for his can of soda, there would be nothing left of him but a bubbling puddle of GOO!!!" Ms. Bitters cackled at the students who listened with rapt, horrorstruck awe...especially Jacob. At the sound of the door closing, she turned her head in his direction. "You're late, Zim." she growled, cocking a brow behind her thick glasses.
"I was infirmed." he answered simply, handing her the note. She accepted it between two of her impossibly long fingers, reading over it.
"Very well, take your seat." she snapped. Zim, knowing he had gotten off easily this time, walked as fast as he was able without increasing the discomfort in his side and belly to his desk and sat down, innocently folding his hands on the desktop and casting a quick look about the room to make sure that no one was looking at him.
"And that concludes our chemistry lesson for the day." the old crone smirked, her ancient eyes scanning the rows of students. The fright in their eyes always did her withered heart good as she slammed the textbook shut and pushed it aside. "Now then, you all had a poetry assignment last night." there was a garbled murmur of agreement from the class. "To better assure ourselves that there is absolutely NO talent in this room whatsoever, you will read them aloud in front of the class. DIB!" The black-haired boy jolted, shaken out of his fantasies of UFO's and Science Fiction.
"Yes Ma'am! Coming Ma'am!" he stuttered, wrangling a piece of paper out of his desk and scurrying up to the front of the room. "Ahem...I call it, 'The Death Of An Alien Race'." he grinned sinisterly in Zim's direction. The irken, however, was staring off into space. Hmph...no matter, the power in his words would capture the alien's attention soon enough.
"Green and sitting in this very class
I alone know the secret!
But do you listen? You are all blind!
The alien, he sits among us.
But the humans have the upper hand.
He alone has come, with the promise of more.
He will know the touch of cold metal
Probing, DEFILING his insides!
I will---"
"Very nice, Dib. D minus." Ms. Bitters' interrupted as she non-chalantly sat, peeling an orange with her pointed nails.
"D minus??" Dib protested. "But---"
"I gave you five sympathy points for proper use of 'defiling'. Siddown." she snorted. Dib opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again, deciding it would be no use to argue as he shuffled uncomfortably back to his desk. To add insult to injury, Zim had paid his presentation no mind as he watched a beetle crawl along the floor. "ZIM!!!" she shrieked, eliciting a startled yelp from the irken. "You're next."
"Of course." Zim leered, wishing all sorts of diseases on the old bat as he rummaged around inside of his knapsack. After a moment, he produced a paper and meandered to the front of the room. As he stood, however, and got ready to speak, a horror dawned on him. The words...they were scrawled in what looked to be a green crayon...and the horrible use of letters. This wasn't his at all! In fact, it looked to be Gir's work that had been mixed amongst his own. "Rrrrghh....that STUPID robot!" he cringed.
"We're waiting, Zim." Ms. Bitters grumbled impatiently.
"Err, can I just--" he began.
"NOW!!!!" the teacher roared. The alien had no choice as he bit his tongue a moment and then began to read off of the paper, feeling queasy.
"You never feed me. I'll sit on your face. That will show you.
Scratch me there! Yes above my tail! Behold, elevator butt.
The rule for today: Touch my tail, I scream real loud. New rule tomorrow.
I leap into the window. I meant to do that!
A blur of motion, then silence. Me, a paper bag, what's so funny, master?
You're always on the computer. Let's see you ignore my sitting on your hands!
My small cardboard box. You cannot see me if I can just hide my head.
Terrible battle. I fought for hours, me and Pig. What is "global conquest"?
I am a brave hunter! I kill pine cones and mosquitos! The vacuum cleaner scares me.
I wanna go outside! Oh no, I got out! Let me back in!!!
Oh no! Master is trapped in the bathtub! To the rescue!
Master is so strange. He lies still in bed for hours, then screams. My feet aren't that cold!
I sing to show I love you. I dreamt I was a mongoose. Want to smell my butt?"
Zim's teeth gritted at the chorus of laughter that erupted from the class and hung his head. Ms. Bitters' eye twitched noticeably.
"As I was saying, class, there is absolutely NO talent in this room. NONE!" she snapped.
"But that wasn't my---" the irken protested, meekly knowing it would be useless.
"F!!!!!" she hissed, grinding her teeth and daring him to defy her. And then, very calmly. "You may sit down." Zim sighed as he returned to his seat. Most definately, it was going to be one of those days.
END OF PART TWO ---TBC
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Zim shivered in the chilly morning air as he stood on the corner awaiting the arrival of the bus. The Game Slave's cardboard package dug uncomfortably into his back from where he had stuffed it into his knapsack along with his other daily requirements and his allottment of homework for the night. Getting the new video game system hadn't been easy...those clerk creatures certainly acted odd every time he tried to leave with his chosen items. Something about forgetting to pay. Idiot humans. At the very least, this would hopefully keep Gaz quiet and out of his way though he loathed having anything to do with her, let alone doing her a favor.
A loud drone in the distance caught his attention as the bulky yellow form of the bus appeared on the horizon. "Finally." he grumbled. It screeched to a halt in front of him and the door slid open. The first thing the irken saw, as he did every morning, was its driver...who in all appearance was a human man with the exception of the fact that (s)he wore ghastly amounts of cosmetics and had somehow squeezed its bulk into a canvas skirt that showed off a pair of massive hairy legs. His first few days of skool when he had ridden this strange form of transit, he had spent much time debating on the creature's gender.
"You gettin' on or what??" Ms. Kathy barked, sounding every bit like a hardened drill seargent. Zim, startled, scampered up the stairs and scanned the rows of half-sleeping worm babies, seeking a place to sit. He felt sick as he saw that the only vacancy seemed to be beside Dib, who already was leering at him accusingly. He shuddered visibly with disgust. Yup, it was going to be another one of those days, apparently. "SIDDOWN!!" the driver shrieked. "Let's get this crate rollin'!! Think I spent fifty years in the armed service and fifty grand on a sex change to haul you little maggots around???"
Grudgingly, having to push himself every step of the way, Zim approached Dib's seat. As he moved to sit, however, Dib slapped a hand noisily onto the green vinyl cushion, glaring at him.
"Sorry Zim." he glowered. "This spot's for Earthlings ONLY."
"YOU MOVE OVER AND LET'IM SIT, YOU FOUR-EYED LITTLE FREAK!!!!" Ms. Kathy ordered, shaking a meaty finger at Dib in the front mirror. Reflexively, Dib scooted as far over to the window as he could and Zim took a seat, unshouldering his knapsack and placing it in his lap. Once he was situated, he cast a cursory look around the bus...but didn't see Gaz anywhere.
"Figures...now I have to haul this wretched electronic human pacifier around with me all day." Zim muttered.
"What?" Dib snapped, glaring at him. There was a crazy hunted look in his eye...as there always was. It was as though the human feared that the entire universe was planning on destroying him and him alone.
"Where is your sister?" Zim inquired. Dib's eyes instantly narrowed, his black hair wet and slick against his forehead from his hurried shower he had taken before rushing out the door that morning and increasing his ominous appearance.
"Why...?" he hissed. Zim cocked a brow at him curiously.
"I just...wanted to know." he answered, his hands fidgeting awkwardly. The last thing he needed was Dib to start another of his shrieking tangents in the middle of the bus where he'd have a captive audience. Dib looked skeptical a moment.
"My father is driving her to school today. Fathers do that sometimes." he answered defensively. "Not like your father who is obviously a rudimentary robot with faulty circuits!!!" Zim cringed, ducking a bit in his seat.
"Will you shut up??" Zim growled, glaring at the boy.
"The truth hurts, doesn't it Zim?? And pretty soon, I won't be the only one who'll be able to see through your trickery!" Dib vowed. "Its not much longer for you, ALIEN!!!!!" he shrieked.
"SHADDAP!!!!!" Ms. Kathy bellowed, effectively silencing Dib's tirade....and for the rest of the ride to school, the two adversaries held a silent staredown, both wordlessly promising the other's downfall.
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Gaz stood at the bus loading zone at the front of the school, her hand shoved into her jacket's front pockets to hide the fact that they were twitching. She had never known that one could go through "Video Game Withdrawl" and needed a virtual fix more than ever. Before she had left for school that morning, she had packed in as much time in front of the television with a joystick in her hands as she could...hense the reason she had been late in getting ready for school and why her father had dropped her off on his way to the laboratory.
Any minute now, the bus would be pulling in containing Dib that that moron Zim. "If he forgot," she said aloud "He's not going to live to see recess." As though on cue, another bus pulled in behind the ones that had already let most of their cargo onto the sidewalk. Gaz peered at the red number in the front window. "R106". Their bus. As the doors slid open and students began to file out, she gritted her teeth and waited.
Dib got off first, spying Gaz standing nearby expectantly and hurrying toward her. "Gaz, get to class! Hurry! The alien was asking about you on the bus!! I warned you this would happen, you're his next target!!!!" he seized her shoulders imploringly. For a long moment time seemed to freeze and then Gaz idly looked down at her brother's hands firmly gripping her.
"You're touching me." she growled. Dib jerked his fingers away as though Gaz's jacket had suddenly become scalding hot. "Where's Zim?" she grumbled. Dib's jaw dropped at her query. Had she gone completely crazy? No...Zim must have already gotten to her. Yes that was the only possible explanation. The alien was brainwashing his sister even as they spoke.
"Ahem." Dib knew the voice before he even turned around.
"Zim." Dib growled at the alien. "You stay away from my sister!! Stay away or I'll---" he was cut off as Gaz rudely shoved him onto the pavement, approaching Zim and assuming a menacing stance.
"Well?" she asked, hands clenching in her pockets. Zim leered at her a moment before unshouldering his knapsack and placing it on the pavement. After struggling with the contents a moment, he produced the slightly dented Game Slave box and thrust it at Gaz.
"Here." he sneered. She accepted it quickly, checking the box to ensure it was, indeed, just like her last one and not some cheap knockoff like the Thumbmaster 2000 and tore it open.
"Thank you." she replied with just as much venom as she tore the Game Slave out of the shrink wrapped plastic it had been sealed in and turned it over to check the battery hatch. "Its empty." she stated coldly. It took all of Zim's willpower to not shriek in utter frustration and claw the wretched human's eyes out. "How am I supposed to play it with no batteries?"
"YOU....didn't say you needed batteries." Zim growled through gritted teeth. He was trembling all over now...and not trying to hide it.
"Well duh, Einstein." Gaz retorted. Beneath Zim's green skin she could see a purple flush beginning to show, and inwardly smirked. She wondered how much further she could push the alien until he exploded at her. Dib needed a considerately larger amount of needling until he blew up....but when one factored in that he was easily terrified of any sort of anger Gaz showed toward him, that wasn't surprising. "What are you? Some kind of idiot?"
"You....you...." Zim clenched his eyes shut, trying to center himself. If he screamed, that would draw attention to himself from everyone else. Just what he didn't need. But something was about to come out of his mouth and he wasn't able to stop it. "FIYAH!!!!!!" he shrieked, waving his arms wildly before turning and storming away, up the stairs, and into the skool building. Zim's substitution of a curse for an explosion of gibberish made a bout of snickers rise in Gaz's throat, but she quickly swallowed them again, allowing herself a triumphant smirk before setting her backpack down, unzipping it, and taking out a plastic sandwich bag that contained her emergency stash of batteries.
Dib simply shook his head as he watched his sister equip her new portable game system and then select a game from her collection and switch it on as if nothing had happened at all. What was going on?
"Gaz, what in God's name are you doing??" Dib demanded.
"Trying to beat level five." she replied non-chalantly.
"He's the enemy!!" her brother implored. "And you're sending him out to get you toys???"
"Uh huh." she muttered.
"Di.....!!!" he squeaked in frustration as his hand collided with his forehead, painfully jabbing the bridge of his glasses into his nose. "You've gone crazy!" he declared. Gaz lifted her pencilled eyes from the screen of her Game Slave to spare him a momentary glare. "That's right!! You and ALL OF YOU!!!!" he yelled to the heavens. "Someday you'll ALL see that I was right!!! THESE ALIENS DON'T WANT TO BUY US TOYS! THEY WANT TO OWN US!!!!"
His rant over, Dib looked up to notice that several random students had paused on their way to class to stare blankly at him and that Gaz had disappeared. He turned on his heel in time to see her disappearing into the skool, still ensconsed in her game. He sniffed in annoyance, looking at the sidewalk and kicking at a stray pebble. He'd show them all, somehow. His ears buzzed as the school bell screamed, alerting everyone that they should already be in class. Sighing, Dib trotted up the stairs, his trenchcoat trailing behind him as he did so.
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"Today, class, I would like to open with the topic of modern music. And how it slowly DESTROYING our culture." Ms. Bitters stated, a tape recorder held in her emaciated claws. "Let's start by looking at a popular artist amongst you children....Strange Bob Raruvic." a scattering of cheers went up from the class's attendance. "SILENCE!!!" the cheers went abruptly silent. The ancient woman crossed the room, taking no steps at all but rather eerily hovering toward the electical outlet and plugging the recorder in. "Now listen closely." she instructed, setting the machine down on her desk and pressing Play.
Oh he believes he can flyyyy
At least he does whenever he gets high
Gets on the table and I hear him say
"I'll spread my wings and fly away!"
He believes he can soar...as he runs into the sliding door
He believes he can---
Ms. Bitters cut off the nasal parody of an otherwise well-known melody. "A 'hilarious' poke at a song that, even when its not being made fun of, contributes NOTHING to society." she snorted. "But...when played backwards..." she prodded a finger at another button.
You're all DOOMED!
All of you!
Yes, even YOU!!!
DOOOOOM!!!
Doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom etc.
None of the students had the nerve to state that the backwards "recording" sounded uncannily like their teacher as she let it run, seating herself at her desk and burying her crooked nose in her leatherbound copy of Dante's Inferno, satisfied that she had accordingly traumatized her students for the day.
Zim sighed softly, rolling his eyes behind his contact lenses as he quietly opened his desk and slipped out a piece of notebook paper and took his pencil out of its metal cradle at the top of the desktop and began to doodle a frighteningly accurate sketch of himself standing atop an iron cage containing Dib and laughing. "Soon..." he promised himself. A world wasn't conquered in a day, after all. He tapped the eraser against his jaw, casting a look around the room. Most of the children were staring straight ahead with a horrified expression as the foretelling of doom continued to drone on the tape recorder...a few had fallen asleep, and then, as always, there was Dib.
The earth boy, while pretending to read his Biology textbook, was staring fixedly at Zim as though he was expecting him to sprout another head at any moment. Zim shot him a glare out of the corner of his eye, scowling icily as Dib mouthed the words "I'll destroy you". The irken cast a look at the clock...another ten minutes until recess. It would be a stretch, but he decided he could go that long without exploding as he returned to his "art".
His next sketch manifested itself into a picture of Dib, smoke coming from a gaping wound in his head as a scrawled version of himself held a blaster and grinned insanely. After a moment of thought, Zim smirked and began to draw a figure standing on the other side of Dib, this one planting a laser blast directly in the bespectacled boy's hind end. There was only one other person in the skool building who hated Dib more than he did and that person was none other than his younger sister.
He hurriedly scribbled in a pair of dark eyes and a sadistic smile. Before long, Gaz stood holding the other blaster. Perhaps she WAS a foul earth beast, but they shared that one thing in common. He pondered folding it up and tossing it onto Dib's desk to see the reaction he'd get but decided against it.
"Well! Enjoying yourself, are you?" Dib's sarcastic voice sounded from directly behind him. Zim cringed and wheeled around in his seat to face his rival. "Oh, and what have we here?" he inquired, making a grab at Zim's desktop and successfully abducting the drawing. Zim made no move to stop him, narrowing his eyes to as much of slits as his lenses would allow. "I don't know what planet you come from, but us earthlings consider something like this as a threat!" Dib snapped, disgusted at both the lack of talent in the piece and fact his sister had been included in it.
"So?" Zim snarled.
"So I wonder what the principal would have to say about something like this?" Dib said with mock-thoughtfulness as he folded the paper in half and scratched the side of his head with it idly. "Hmm....oh, I know! They'd call the police!" he glowered at the alien. "And they'd lock you away! And then they'd HAVE to listen to me! And then you know what, Zim? They'll cut apart your brainmeats!!!"
"HA!! You and your police insects don't scare me!" Zim declared, standing. Dib felt his grip tighten around the paper, crushing it in his hand as the two adversaries sized one another up. And then...lifting the tension from the classroom, the recess bell sounded and children, like hairless lemmings, poured out of the building and onto the playground. Zim, grudgingly turning away from Dib, walked stiffly out of the room and outside. He had almost wished Dib had thrown a punch so he'd have an excuse to attack him and possibly end his problems with the earth boy then and there.
"The enemy will show his weakness by dealing the first blow." an old Irken proverb resounded in his head in a sing-song voice. He recalled it was one of Tallest Purple's favorite phrases as he and Red had overseen the troops' training in the previous years. Zim, being a creature of immediate action, had often tossed this particular bit of advice to the hellfires when the first sign of action reared its head. However, this being a strange planet, he was drawing all he could from his training.
He paused at the doorway to the playground, peering outside to ensure that it wasn't raining or that there were no nearby puddles that someone could carelessly send splashing in his direction. Satisfied that it was safe, he ventured into the sunlight. Nearby, some children were engaged in a game of 'Crack The Whip' and a bit further down, a game of dodgeball was taking place. Zim, having realized early on that he wasn't an athletic sort, headed for the swing set. At least there, his organs weren't in danger of becoming putty from an incoming ball. The swings were mostly empty, he found, as he struggled into the first one he came to.
"What do YOU want?" a familiar voice inquired, accompanied by electronic blips and tinny music. This time, Zim didn't even turn, already knowing who occupied the swing beside him. This day, quite frankly, was starting to get on his nerves. Being ping ponged between the two siblings' ill will toward him was getting to be too much of a bad thing.
"I have a self-destruct button." he stated jovially with a large false smile, as though he was simply commenting on the weather. "Say another word, and I'll grab onto you and press it."
"Yeah right." Gaz muttered, drawing in her breath in an angered hiss as her player fell just short of reaching the other side of a gap and tumbled to his death.
"Do not mock my button!" he growled, rolling up his sleeve to show the module with the tiny red button in the middle of it and poising his finger over it. Gaz lifted her head, simply looking at him for a long moment.
"Are you always such a dweeb?" she inquired, making a disgusted noise as she returned to her game. Zim, rising to the bait, smirked a bit.
"I don't know. Are you always so smelly?" he retorted. Gaz, not expecting him to have come up with a comeback at all, blinked twice to show her dismay but did nothing more as she continued to play.
"Slimebucket." she shot back.
"Human filth." Zim answered non-chalantly.
"Geekoid." she returned automatically.
"Purple-backed rat creature." the irken stated, pretending to buff his gloved nails on the front of his shirt.
"Creep." Gaz had audibly put her game slave on pause and was now glaring at Zim.
"Near-sighted Zeeglark."
"Is that your face, or did your neck throw up something?" Gaz inquired bitterly. Zim's mind stuttered, having not been prepared for a question. After a moment of trying to get his train of thought back on its rails, he gave up and sat in defeated, angry silence pumping his spindly legs and attempting to get his swing to go.
"Faulty human technology..." he sighed, shaking his head in distaste.
"The X button on this Game Slave sticks." Gaz stated.
"Ask me if I care, Gaz. Just....go on, humor me. Ask me." he urged sarcastically.
"Feh. Is THIS why Dib wants to see you field dressed by rabid gophers?" she asked.
"Do I look like I know what's going on in that inpenetrable skull of his?" Zim snorted.
"At least that's one thing we can agree on." Gaz answered. "Sometimes I just want to wrap my hands around his neck---"
"---and strangle him till he turns ten shades of blue." Both Zim and Gaz paused as they realized they had stolen one another's sentences.
"Hm. Guess we DO think alike." she stated, sounding not-at-all interested and continuing to play her game as Zim suspiciously checked the back of his head and neck for a neuron transmitter someone may have planted on him when his guard was down. It was bad enough he was suspected, he didn't need to be broadcasting his thoughts to the humans too. Not finding one, he slid out of the swing, all the while eyeing Gaz out of the corner of his eye suspiciously. "Where're you going?"
"What do you care?" he asked flatly.
"I don't." she shrugged, her eyes never leaving the screen of the Game Slave. "I'd move if I were you." she added half-heartedly. Before Zim could ask why, a soccerball slammed into the back of his head, making red stars momentarily dance before his eyes. "Idiot." she grumbled as Zim collapsed on his face and the owner of the ball tromped up behind the fallen irken to reclaim it.
"Is he okay??" a voice called from the field.
"Yeh, he's fine." the beefy kid who had approached grunted, grabbing the ball up beneath one pudgy arm and examining Zim. "Its that green kid." he noted.
"Oh. He's a wuss! Kick him!" the voice called back.
"Heh....alright." he smirked, drawing back his foot and planting it firmly in Zim's side.
"YARGH!!!!" Zim yelped, scrambling to his hands and knees. Gaz's eyes shifted upward to watch as the kid retreated with the soccer ball and then to Zim to see if he'd get up. He seemed alive....good enough. She unpaused her game and went back to firing at a rather large dragon that was guarding the entrance to the Faerie Realm.
"Die..." she willed it mentally as her player jumped, just narrowly avoiding one of the beast's acid wads. One more shot should just about do it....she poised her thumb over the V button, ready to fire as soon as the dragon opened its mouth again. The shot was never fired....in fact, the Game Slave was jolted straight out of her hands and onto the ground as something jostled her body. Gaz watched in silent horror as the battery hatch popped free and the two Double A's clattered onto the pavement. Ruined. She'd have to start all the way back from The Gate Of The Ancients!! Fury burning in her narrow eyes, she looked downward to see Zim clinging to her ankle, eyes squeezed shut and a pained grimace on his face.
"My....my flinnadon...." he groaned, clutching at the right side of his lower belly. If he was going to count his blessings, at least his squeedly-spooch and eeronz felt intact. Instead of helping, Gaz gave her leg a violent kick, sending him sprawling on his injured front onto the sidewalk as she hopped off of the swing and landed squarely on the irken's back, which made a most unsavoury crunching noise.
"You really must not have a will to live." she growled, hopping off of his body and stooping to place the batteries back into her Game Slave and ignoring the labored grunts nearby as Zim drew himself wearily to his knees.
"Ennngghhh..." Zim groaned, taking a deep rasping breath.
"I mean, do you know how long its going to take me to get back to that stupid dragon? At LEAST five minutes." she scoffed, clicking the battery hatch closed again, switching her game back on and reseating herself on her swing. Though she tried her best to pretend that she couldn't hear Zim's pained noises for the next several minutes, eventually she found that they were effecting her gameplay. At length, she had finally reached her limit and put Warriors Of Panic on pause. "Fine. If you're gonna be a baby about it..." she muttered as she slid out of her swing once more, seizing Zim's impossibly thin upper arm and dragging him behind her along the pavement.
She decided she'd drop him at the nurse's station and from then on, he'd be their problem. At this point, frankly, she'd do anything to get him to leave her alone. Who knew? Maybe she'd still have a few salvagable minutes of recess afterward. Several children favored her with an unsavory look as she meandered up the stairs, Zim's limp form making a meaty thwap on each step. He made a protesting grunt as she heaved the skool door with her shoulder and dragged him inside. "Stop complaining." she snapped. "We're almost there."
Eight hallways later, they arrived at the nurse's office, more commonly referred to as "the quarantine unit" by the students as Gaz kicked the door open, hauling Zim in behind her. The receptionist, a girl who looked freshly out of high school and incredibly bored, sat idly playing with a plastic snowglobe.
"Yeah?" she inquired, sparing Gaz a cursory look before returning to watching the bits of white plastic drift through the water.
"Yeah. I think this kid's brain is broken." the violet-haired girl said, pointing at Zim's inert form on the floor with a shrug.
"Uh huh..." the receptionist muttered without even looking at the fallen irken, giving the globe a shake. "Take him down to the cot room. There's a nurse around here somewhere, I think." Gaz gave a put-out sigh and grabbed Zim by the ankles, dragging him across the tiles with a soft hissing sound of his clothing against the floor. Luckily, he wasn't very heavy...otherwise she would have left him out on the playground for the crows to eat...if they liked alien meat, of course.
As she passed the threshold, Gaz worked her grip under Zim's arms, trying to wrangle him into her arms so that she could deposit him onto a cot. After struggling a moment, she managed to heave him most of the way onto one of them on his back, one leg draped limply over the side. Gaz stood a moment, regarding him silently before quietly switching her Game Slave on again.
"You owe me one, Zim." she stated flatly as her game fired up and she left him behind. The bell signalling recess's end sounded shrilly as she quickened her pace just a bit. Mr. Crowson, her teacher, was known for threatening tardy students with "the belt". While none of them had actually SEEN the belt, they had heard about it. It was nine feet long, eight feet wide, and it had hooks on it, that would tear the meat from your body. No one had been late to Mr. Crowson's class in over twelve years, suffice to say.
Shortly after Gaz had left, a round red-headed lady bustled into the cot room, carrying a metal tray of various medical impliments with her. "Oh dear!" she exclaimed, upon seeing Zim. "And what happened to YOU, little boy? You weren't fighting, were you??" she sighed, shaking her head as she began a custom check of his body, feeling his belly and chest for broken bones.
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Zim didn't know how long he had laid there floating in his own personal sea of agony, but he had been awakened by the choking stench of some foul stinging liquid that the overfed nurse beast had applied to a scrape on his forehead he had acquired during Gaz's "escort". Rubbing Alcohol, she had called it. After several minutes of bickering with her that he was fine and that there was no need in the known universe to phone his parents, he had been given a slip of paper admitting him back to class and a grape lollipop.
He was still sore from his manhandling, but was sure he'd shake it off by tomorrow at the latest as he shifted the lollipop into his cheek pocket, letting the too-sweet grape flavor wash over his snake-like tongue. It hurt slightly to walk...the incident on the playground had likely bruised a few muscles, but had done no real damage to his bones or organs. That was a relief. The last thing he needed was to have to delay his mission due to being dehabilitated while his body regenerated a ruined innard.
As he turned down the hallway leading to his classroom, the irken's thoughts shifted to Gaz. Tallest, how he disliked her sometimes. She resided in a very awkward place on his list of people..somewhere between a sworn enemy with her bursts of rage and a kindred spirit in the way that both of them hated all of humanity. He knew that if he had really wanted to, he could have refused to retrieve a new Game Slave for her after her other one had been destroyed. It was general intimidation and the knowledge that Gaz possessed the power to beat the hell out of anyone who opposed her despite their size, he supposed.
It was too bad she was a human, really....someone like her could have done well in the irken army. Bah, that was foolspeak. She was a human, just like the rest of them. A clump of rancid meat to be wasted. There was no way she could ever be held in as high a regard as an irken of any sort...not even the shortest! Zim shook his head at his own foolery as he arrived outside of Ms. Bitters' door and entered.
"--the point of this lesson being, that if Jacob here was to mistake this beaker of arsenic for his can of soda, there would be nothing left of him but a bubbling puddle of GOO!!!" Ms. Bitters cackled at the students who listened with rapt, horrorstruck awe...especially Jacob. At the sound of the door closing, she turned her head in his direction. "You're late, Zim." she growled, cocking a brow behind her thick glasses.
"I was infirmed." he answered simply, handing her the note. She accepted it between two of her impossibly long fingers, reading over it.
"Very well, take your seat." she snapped. Zim, knowing he had gotten off easily this time, walked as fast as he was able without increasing the discomfort in his side and belly to his desk and sat down, innocently folding his hands on the desktop and casting a quick look about the room to make sure that no one was looking at him.
"And that concludes our chemistry lesson for the day." the old crone smirked, her ancient eyes scanning the rows of students. The fright in their eyes always did her withered heart good as she slammed the textbook shut and pushed it aside. "Now then, you all had a poetry assignment last night." there was a garbled murmur of agreement from the class. "To better assure ourselves that there is absolutely NO talent in this room whatsoever, you will read them aloud in front of the class. DIB!" The black-haired boy jolted, shaken out of his fantasies of UFO's and Science Fiction.
"Yes Ma'am! Coming Ma'am!" he stuttered, wrangling a piece of paper out of his desk and scurrying up to the front of the room. "Ahem...I call it, 'The Death Of An Alien Race'." he grinned sinisterly in Zim's direction. The irken, however, was staring off into space. Hmph...no matter, the power in his words would capture the alien's attention soon enough.
"Green and sitting in this very class
I alone know the secret!
But do you listen? You are all blind!
The alien, he sits among us.
But the humans have the upper hand.
He alone has come, with the promise of more.
He will know the touch of cold metal
Probing, DEFILING his insides!
I will---"
"Very nice, Dib. D minus." Ms. Bitters' interrupted as she non-chalantly sat, peeling an orange with her pointed nails.
"D minus??" Dib protested. "But---"
"I gave you five sympathy points for proper use of 'defiling'. Siddown." she snorted. Dib opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again, deciding it would be no use to argue as he shuffled uncomfortably back to his desk. To add insult to injury, Zim had paid his presentation no mind as he watched a beetle crawl along the floor. "ZIM!!!" she shrieked, eliciting a startled yelp from the irken. "You're next."
"Of course." Zim leered, wishing all sorts of diseases on the old bat as he rummaged around inside of his knapsack. After a moment, he produced a paper and meandered to the front of the room. As he stood, however, and got ready to speak, a horror dawned on him. The words...they were scrawled in what looked to be a green crayon...and the horrible use of letters. This wasn't his at all! In fact, it looked to be Gir's work that had been mixed amongst his own. "Rrrrghh....that STUPID robot!" he cringed.
"We're waiting, Zim." Ms. Bitters grumbled impatiently.
"Err, can I just--" he began.
"NOW!!!!" the teacher roared. The alien had no choice as he bit his tongue a moment and then began to read off of the paper, feeling queasy.
"You never feed me. I'll sit on your face. That will show you.
Scratch me there! Yes above my tail! Behold, elevator butt.
The rule for today: Touch my tail, I scream real loud. New rule tomorrow.
I leap into the window. I meant to do that!
A blur of motion, then silence. Me, a paper bag, what's so funny, master?
You're always on the computer. Let's see you ignore my sitting on your hands!
My small cardboard box. You cannot see me if I can just hide my head.
Terrible battle. I fought for hours, me and Pig. What is "global conquest"?
I am a brave hunter! I kill pine cones and mosquitos! The vacuum cleaner scares me.
I wanna go outside! Oh no, I got out! Let me back in!!!
Oh no! Master is trapped in the bathtub! To the rescue!
Master is so strange. He lies still in bed for hours, then screams. My feet aren't that cold!
I sing to show I love you. I dreamt I was a mongoose. Want to smell my butt?"
Zim's teeth gritted at the chorus of laughter that erupted from the class and hung his head. Ms. Bitters' eye twitched noticeably.
"As I was saying, class, there is absolutely NO talent in this room. NONE!" she snapped.
"But that wasn't my---" the irken protested, meekly knowing it would be useless.
"F!!!!!" she hissed, grinding her teeth and daring him to defy her. And then, very calmly. "You may sit down." Zim sighed as he returned to his seat. Most definately, it was going to be one of those days.
END OF PART TWO ---TBC