*Jaw drops at the reviews* Wow...Purple, they...they enjoy it? *Tears up*
Thank you...I...I love you...*Quote GIR in "Rise of the Zitboy" to the
pizza dude...*
Whoooeeee! S'a weekend!! WEEK'S END!!!! Now I will log in more angst of doom...just for all you people still coaching me on!
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Invader Zim or any of the characters!!! Erm...except Peprik...she's an original. Yup. I'm gonna be the brain surgeon of insanity when I get older...messing with people's heads...*poke poke*
Enjoy Month Two!!!
Chapter Five: Month Two
Almighty Tallest Red paced the hall in front of the testing room, looking expectingly at the clock above the metal door. The room had no windows, so Red could not see what the doctors were doing to his critically sick partner. They had run some test earlier that month and had found the majority of the white matter to be gathering around Purple's chest cavity and lower lungs. Today, of course, was the beginning of the real challenge: finding out what was happening to Purple's weakened body.
A small green light lit up beside the door with a light chime, and the door slid open as a doctor stepped out. "We've completed half of the test, so you can go in while he's recuperating."
"Recuperating? From what?"
"All we did was run him through the concentrated radioactivity unit to isolate the foreign material."
"Isolate? Its floating around inside of him?"
The Irken rolled her yellow eyes, crossing her arms. "Not quite, my Tallest. But you'd better go in there anyway and ask him how he's feeling. He won't tell us."
"So he's being a stubborn ass again. Fine, Peprik, whatever you say."
Red looked around when he stepped into the room, suprised. It was completely white, with a large piece of equipment in the middle of the room. It was connected to the tube in which Purple floated, eyes closed, yawning.
"You really clash with this room, Pur. You should dye your eyes florescent green."
Pur cast a glance over at Red. "No thanks. I would gouge out my own eyes for fear of blindness from the exploding color."
"Good idea." Red floated up to his fellow Tallest and tapped the glass. "Did they take you out of the other one and put you in this one?"
Sadly, Purple shook his head. "The doctors argued that I would be too weak to walk, so they...they freakin' wheeled me down here."
Red held his laugh in at the thought. "Very amusing, Pur. I should've gotten it on tape."
Purple snorted. Red noticed that his speech, although not yet slurred, sounded slower and more forced. Probably just the fluid.
"So...what's it feel like?"
Purple's soft eyes lost their spark. "What part, being stuck in a test tube or having white things messing me up from the inside?"
"Mostly I'd like to hear about the white things, because right now I really don't give a damn about anything else."
"Ah. The doctors have done five tests so far this morning. The first one was just run a scan over the heart/lungs area. The second was pinpoint the biggest problem, which they won't tell me, of course. The third and fourth tests were unsuccessful. The doctors tried to find out what it could stand, but they ended up ripping a hole in my chest the size of your head. The fifth was the radioactive scan-thingie over there--" he pointed to the large machine behind him "--and they haven't gotten results back yet."
Red looked at Purple's chest area and saw a reddish-black pit behind the white gown. Confused, he turned away. "Does it hurt yet?" No answer. Then,
"...Yes."
They both listened to the thrum of the Massive.
"Red? Where are we?"
"Over the Triple Binary."
"Oh. We're that far?"
"We took a detour. The pilots didn't want to jolt you around so much after they learned that you were sick."
Purple's eyes sparked. "You told them?"
Red shrugged. "No. They kinda figured that you were missing after stalking me for a week. If I'm there, Purple's gotta be there, right? Thanks for ruining my independence."
Purple glared at him, which wasn't very disturbing, mainly because Purple's eyes had taken on an off-white film color. "Oh, yes, thank you, Red, for not freakin' telling them that I still can make it!"
Just then, Peprik stepped in with a sheet of paper in her hand. "Hello, my Tallests," she saluted, then turned to Red. "We're doing the rest of the testing right now. You'll have to leave."
"Why?"
Peprik shook her head. "Look who's being the ass now. It's for sanitation purposes, my Tallest. You'll be able to ask him afterwards." She herded him out of the door.
Red turned around just as the door was closing. Through the diminishing crack in the door he saw Peprik hold up the paper, and Purple's expression fell.
The door closed.
O.o
"You ready?"
Purple nodded. "So what are we going to do now?"
Peprik fastened the plastic mask over her face. "We're going to take a sample of the actual stuff. I put some anesthetic in, so you'll feel minimal pain."
"Not like I'm a stranger to it," Purple mumbled as the needle approached the gaping hole in his chest cavity. "Hey, when are you going to seal this up?"
"When this test is over," Peprik called. "I'm going in!"
The robotic-arm controlled needle slid in behind his breastbone and up and around his heart. He felt a squishy mass behind being tugged at, then a slight jolt of pain as is tore loose.
"Got it!" Peprik cried happily, pulling the arm out.
"Good," Purple gasped, breathing hard. Something had constricted. He watched as the robot arm with the squishy wad of white stuff drew away from him and placed the material in a clear box. "Now can you seal me up?"
Peprik took the box and looked at it. "What the hell is that?"
Purple shook his head. Peprik moved the box slightly.
Click.
"What the hell was that?" Purple snapped his head around.
"Look," Peprik held it up. "There's something hard in the midst of that stuff."
Peprik leaned down and spoke into the intercom. "I need assistant 7433 to report to CRU room, please. Assistant 7433."
Soon, a stocky green-eyed Irken wearing a lab coat stumbled into the room. "Reporting, Assistant 7433 Neo. Do you need something?"
"Here," Peprik handed him the box. "Be extremely careful and take it down to analysis. I want a report within the hour."
"Yes, ma'am." Neo sprinted away.
"Let's get back to patching you up," Peprik turned to Purple. "Hold still, please."
"So--damn...so you found that in the whi--dammit!--white stuff?"
Peprik jerked the arm controls to the right, tightening the surgical thread. "I don't even know yet, my Tallest. Once we get that big of a sample back I'll be able to decode the entire dis--erm, problem."
Purple was silent as she sewed the flaps of gray-green skin back into place. As she knotted the last thread, she looked up at him. "I suggest you try to get some rest, my Tallest. You're not going to be able to fight this unless you replenish your strength."
"Thanks, Peprik." Purple closed his film-covered eyes once more and tried to ignore the nagging feeling that there was something irreversibly wrong with him. Peprik slipped out and closed the door softly behind her. She breathed a sigh of relief, then dread sank down like a blanket. That substance was not supposed to be hard. It wasn't even detectable on the computer, so they had had to go in from the front. She cringed. Shaking the sick feeling off, she made her way down to the analysis lab, where the boxed sample was set in the computer's analyze area. Neo, of course, had once again forgotten to run the test himself. She rolled the blue orb in front of her once, and two robotic arms folded up and out of the sides of the analyze area's side, poised over the mass.
Putting her arms in the gloves that controlled the robotic arms, she began to probe the middle section. There was a hard lump in the middle. It wasn't giving at all. She peeled the infectious white stuff away and revealed a dark colored sphere about the size of her fingerprint. She attempted to pick it up, but it slipped away and enfolded itself between the flaps of white. Taking a deep breath, she carefully felt around for it where she had last seen it, but nothing was there.
"The damn thing moves?" she hissed to herself as she searched. "That's odd..."
Suddenly, the white mass jerked three times, convulsing. Peprik withdrew the arms and watched with fear. It wasn't changing color; it looked as if it were being tossed around on the inside.
"This asinine action has to be a mistake," she reassured herself. "It cannot be real..."
As soon as it stopped, Peprik tenderly poked it with one of the arms. It did not move. What she did hit, however, scared her more than any disease ever could.
As she pulled the arm out, there were three spherical balls, each the same size as the one she had tried to pick up. They were connected in a triangular shape. Small red dots appeared on all three, and they began turning each other, tearing the arm to shreds, slowly. Panicked, Peprik attempted to shake it off, but it was latched on by means of a long, thin rod in the middle.
But the turning began to slow down and suddenly stop. The rod folded in on itself and the three circles separated, dropped and disappeared into their disease. Peprik cleared her throat. "Computer, what just happened?"
"Identify subject, please."
"I don't know. Can't you give me an educated guess?"
"Negative. Programming unavailable."
"What is it doing?"
"Subject Unknown shows no signs of radioactivity. Subject Unknown does show signs of undetected bacteria stores, viruses, and Unknown Subject Two."
"Bring up Unknown Subject Two."
The screen was projected, and the circular ball was shown.
"What does Unknown Subject Two consist of?"
"Requested data unknown."
Peprik slapped her forehead. "What activity is going on."
"Data unknown."
"That's not possible!"
"Data requested not available."
Peprik punched the shut-down button on the console and the screen disappeared. She looked at the white blob, hardly breathing. "That...thing...wasn't there before...I must have missed it..."
The thing quivered, taunting her.
Go ahead. Try me.
Peprik's antennae lowered sadly. The thought of Purple...being torn apart from the inside...she squeezed her dull yellow eyes shut. It would not happen. She would not let it happen...it would not happen...
And yet, as the white blob quivered there like a live Demoralized Blob, she wondered if it had already reached the point where nothing could be done about it. It wasn't a large sample, but the round, spiky objects...had it duplicated...or did she just skip over them?
She swiveled in the chair, rocking her head back and forth. If it was concentrated near her Tallest's heart and lung area, it posed a fatal threat if the spheres came out again. What confused her was that it hadn't happened already. What did it react to? When would it react? Would any warning signs be given?
Peprik chewed her bottom lip and gazed upward. The answers would come only by more testing. But every time she performed them, Purple looked more helpless and lonely. It was all in his eyes, which, instead of the healthy, rich violet they had been, had withdrawn in their grandeur to a dusty, pale lavender. He approved the tests only because he had to. She could tell. Then again, Tallest Red...
Peprik grinned weakly as she thought of Red. He was worried, all right. She had seen the hatred boiling in his crimson eyes at the thought of his partner being put in the tube. The two were bonded by a simple vow of leadership; one could not make due without the other. They were used to it.
She perked her antennae. She would have to put her Tallest through another test again. Not that he wouldn't make it...but he would have to go through an extra recuperation day. She shook her head. It had to be done.
Wearily pushing herself out of the chair, Peprik made her way over to the door and passed into the hall leading up to the testing room. She hoped Red wasn't following her. That would be a problem.
Purple was figuring out the velocity of the Massive compared to the Flagships when Peprik trudged in. He barely glanced at her as she set the huge machine up for work. "Bad day?"
Peprik shook her head. "Maybe..."
Purple stopped scribbling on the side of the tube with his finger and looked at the machine behind him. "Another test?"
"I'm afraid so," Peprik admitted, turning the test tube around so it faced a giant piece of machinery that looked like a super sized laser. "This one's quite awkward, since you'll still be in the tube. This will record what the white substance is doing to you."
"Did you find anything unusual about the sample you took earlier?"
Peprik ran her hand over a thin rectangle of glass. The machinery powered up. "I can't understand it," she admitted, "so I'm running this to clarify some...suspicions."
She sat back and watched as the laser fired a thin ray of crimson light onto Purple's chest. A screen came up in front of it. There was Purple's chest armor; as the laser drilled in she could see his light green skin break. The laser hit the first obstacle--his aorta--and spread its light around the proximity. Peprik, her heart in her throat, enlarged the hologram and cleared it.
At first, all she saw was his slowly beating heart, with just a few jumps and halts. But as it became more defined, she saw that his left and right ventricles were coated with the white stuff, along with the heavily burdened aorta. It was covered with the infectious blob all the way past his heart to the lower lung area. His lungs, on the other hand, were clear, except for an unnatural shadow on the lower lung area. As she watched, the white stuff spread itself down the aorta in slow waves every couple of heartbeats.
Peprik blinked, unbelieving. She stepped away from the monitor. The dust shadow...was that the stuff that was hidden in the white mass?
Purple looked at her. "Something wrong? What, do I really look that bad?"
Peprik's eyes filled with tears. "S...sir? W...will you excuse me...fo...for a sec...ond..."
Purple watched her as she stumbled out into the hall. Pressing her back against the cold wall, she internally battled to keep the grief from overwhelming her. The disease had spread much faster than she had planned for. He could not shake this off in time for them to find a serum.
"Peprik?"
Peprik hiccuped and looked upward. Red was standing there, concerned. "What's wrong? Other doctors chewing you up again?"
Peprik shook her head wildly, her antennae swinging. "Tallest Purple...Sir...he's...the white...it's covering his...it's suffocating him, sir. I can't find a serum to stop it in time! It's gone too far..."
The news struck Red like a punch in the stomach, but he held emotions down to ask one question. "How much time do you think he has?"
Peprik wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "Considering...this started...several...months...ago...I predict..."
She hiccuped. "I'd stretch it out to...two or three more..."
Red's antennae dropped against his skull. "Have you told him?"
She shook her head.
Red snorted softly, then opened the door. "I'm always the hero."
O.o
Nne: Yes, yes, very amusing! I type lots... To answer some questions about how he got it (I realize it's not the best plot), go back to the first two chapters and read!! The Jacker makes a stretching motion...yeah, that part. Kind of a context thingie.
Pur: *rolls eyes* Yeah. Context. Your fics are bologna! Or is it baloney...?
Nne: I hate that word!! Next month comes soon!
Whoooeeee! S'a weekend!! WEEK'S END!!!! Now I will log in more angst of doom...just for all you people still coaching me on!
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Invader Zim or any of the characters!!! Erm...except Peprik...she's an original. Yup. I'm gonna be the brain surgeon of insanity when I get older...messing with people's heads...*poke poke*
Enjoy Month Two!!!
Chapter Five: Month Two
Almighty Tallest Red paced the hall in front of the testing room, looking expectingly at the clock above the metal door. The room had no windows, so Red could not see what the doctors were doing to his critically sick partner. They had run some test earlier that month and had found the majority of the white matter to be gathering around Purple's chest cavity and lower lungs. Today, of course, was the beginning of the real challenge: finding out what was happening to Purple's weakened body.
A small green light lit up beside the door with a light chime, and the door slid open as a doctor stepped out. "We've completed half of the test, so you can go in while he's recuperating."
"Recuperating? From what?"
"All we did was run him through the concentrated radioactivity unit to isolate the foreign material."
"Isolate? Its floating around inside of him?"
The Irken rolled her yellow eyes, crossing her arms. "Not quite, my Tallest. But you'd better go in there anyway and ask him how he's feeling. He won't tell us."
"So he's being a stubborn ass again. Fine, Peprik, whatever you say."
Red looked around when he stepped into the room, suprised. It was completely white, with a large piece of equipment in the middle of the room. It was connected to the tube in which Purple floated, eyes closed, yawning.
"You really clash with this room, Pur. You should dye your eyes florescent green."
Pur cast a glance over at Red. "No thanks. I would gouge out my own eyes for fear of blindness from the exploding color."
"Good idea." Red floated up to his fellow Tallest and tapped the glass. "Did they take you out of the other one and put you in this one?"
Sadly, Purple shook his head. "The doctors argued that I would be too weak to walk, so they...they freakin' wheeled me down here."
Red held his laugh in at the thought. "Very amusing, Pur. I should've gotten it on tape."
Purple snorted. Red noticed that his speech, although not yet slurred, sounded slower and more forced. Probably just the fluid.
"So...what's it feel like?"
Purple's soft eyes lost their spark. "What part, being stuck in a test tube or having white things messing me up from the inside?"
"Mostly I'd like to hear about the white things, because right now I really don't give a damn about anything else."
"Ah. The doctors have done five tests so far this morning. The first one was just run a scan over the heart/lungs area. The second was pinpoint the biggest problem, which they won't tell me, of course. The third and fourth tests were unsuccessful. The doctors tried to find out what it could stand, but they ended up ripping a hole in my chest the size of your head. The fifth was the radioactive scan-thingie over there--" he pointed to the large machine behind him "--and they haven't gotten results back yet."
Red looked at Purple's chest area and saw a reddish-black pit behind the white gown. Confused, he turned away. "Does it hurt yet?" No answer. Then,
"...Yes."
They both listened to the thrum of the Massive.
"Red? Where are we?"
"Over the Triple Binary."
"Oh. We're that far?"
"We took a detour. The pilots didn't want to jolt you around so much after they learned that you were sick."
Purple's eyes sparked. "You told them?"
Red shrugged. "No. They kinda figured that you were missing after stalking me for a week. If I'm there, Purple's gotta be there, right? Thanks for ruining my independence."
Purple glared at him, which wasn't very disturbing, mainly because Purple's eyes had taken on an off-white film color. "Oh, yes, thank you, Red, for not freakin' telling them that I still can make it!"
Just then, Peprik stepped in with a sheet of paper in her hand. "Hello, my Tallests," she saluted, then turned to Red. "We're doing the rest of the testing right now. You'll have to leave."
"Why?"
Peprik shook her head. "Look who's being the ass now. It's for sanitation purposes, my Tallest. You'll be able to ask him afterwards." She herded him out of the door.
Red turned around just as the door was closing. Through the diminishing crack in the door he saw Peprik hold up the paper, and Purple's expression fell.
The door closed.
O.o
"You ready?"
Purple nodded. "So what are we going to do now?"
Peprik fastened the plastic mask over her face. "We're going to take a sample of the actual stuff. I put some anesthetic in, so you'll feel minimal pain."
"Not like I'm a stranger to it," Purple mumbled as the needle approached the gaping hole in his chest cavity. "Hey, when are you going to seal this up?"
"When this test is over," Peprik called. "I'm going in!"
The robotic-arm controlled needle slid in behind his breastbone and up and around his heart. He felt a squishy mass behind being tugged at, then a slight jolt of pain as is tore loose.
"Got it!" Peprik cried happily, pulling the arm out.
"Good," Purple gasped, breathing hard. Something had constricted. He watched as the robot arm with the squishy wad of white stuff drew away from him and placed the material in a clear box. "Now can you seal me up?"
Peprik took the box and looked at it. "What the hell is that?"
Purple shook his head. Peprik moved the box slightly.
Click.
"What the hell was that?" Purple snapped his head around.
"Look," Peprik held it up. "There's something hard in the midst of that stuff."
Peprik leaned down and spoke into the intercom. "I need assistant 7433 to report to CRU room, please. Assistant 7433."
Soon, a stocky green-eyed Irken wearing a lab coat stumbled into the room. "Reporting, Assistant 7433 Neo. Do you need something?"
"Here," Peprik handed him the box. "Be extremely careful and take it down to analysis. I want a report within the hour."
"Yes, ma'am." Neo sprinted away.
"Let's get back to patching you up," Peprik turned to Purple. "Hold still, please."
"So--damn...so you found that in the whi--dammit!--white stuff?"
Peprik jerked the arm controls to the right, tightening the surgical thread. "I don't even know yet, my Tallest. Once we get that big of a sample back I'll be able to decode the entire dis--erm, problem."
Purple was silent as she sewed the flaps of gray-green skin back into place. As she knotted the last thread, she looked up at him. "I suggest you try to get some rest, my Tallest. You're not going to be able to fight this unless you replenish your strength."
"Thanks, Peprik." Purple closed his film-covered eyes once more and tried to ignore the nagging feeling that there was something irreversibly wrong with him. Peprik slipped out and closed the door softly behind her. She breathed a sigh of relief, then dread sank down like a blanket. That substance was not supposed to be hard. It wasn't even detectable on the computer, so they had had to go in from the front. She cringed. Shaking the sick feeling off, she made her way down to the analysis lab, where the boxed sample was set in the computer's analyze area. Neo, of course, had once again forgotten to run the test himself. She rolled the blue orb in front of her once, and two robotic arms folded up and out of the sides of the analyze area's side, poised over the mass.
Putting her arms in the gloves that controlled the robotic arms, she began to probe the middle section. There was a hard lump in the middle. It wasn't giving at all. She peeled the infectious white stuff away and revealed a dark colored sphere about the size of her fingerprint. She attempted to pick it up, but it slipped away and enfolded itself between the flaps of white. Taking a deep breath, she carefully felt around for it where she had last seen it, but nothing was there.
"The damn thing moves?" she hissed to herself as she searched. "That's odd..."
Suddenly, the white mass jerked three times, convulsing. Peprik withdrew the arms and watched with fear. It wasn't changing color; it looked as if it were being tossed around on the inside.
"This asinine action has to be a mistake," she reassured herself. "It cannot be real..."
As soon as it stopped, Peprik tenderly poked it with one of the arms. It did not move. What she did hit, however, scared her more than any disease ever could.
As she pulled the arm out, there were three spherical balls, each the same size as the one she had tried to pick up. They were connected in a triangular shape. Small red dots appeared on all three, and they began turning each other, tearing the arm to shreds, slowly. Panicked, Peprik attempted to shake it off, but it was latched on by means of a long, thin rod in the middle.
But the turning began to slow down and suddenly stop. The rod folded in on itself and the three circles separated, dropped and disappeared into their disease. Peprik cleared her throat. "Computer, what just happened?"
"Identify subject, please."
"I don't know. Can't you give me an educated guess?"
"Negative. Programming unavailable."
"What is it doing?"
"Subject Unknown shows no signs of radioactivity. Subject Unknown does show signs of undetected bacteria stores, viruses, and Unknown Subject Two."
"Bring up Unknown Subject Two."
The screen was projected, and the circular ball was shown.
"What does Unknown Subject Two consist of?"
"Requested data unknown."
Peprik slapped her forehead. "What activity is going on."
"Data unknown."
"That's not possible!"
"Data requested not available."
Peprik punched the shut-down button on the console and the screen disappeared. She looked at the white blob, hardly breathing. "That...thing...wasn't there before...I must have missed it..."
The thing quivered, taunting her.
Go ahead. Try me.
Peprik's antennae lowered sadly. The thought of Purple...being torn apart from the inside...she squeezed her dull yellow eyes shut. It would not happen. She would not let it happen...it would not happen...
And yet, as the white blob quivered there like a live Demoralized Blob, she wondered if it had already reached the point where nothing could be done about it. It wasn't a large sample, but the round, spiky objects...had it duplicated...or did she just skip over them?
She swiveled in the chair, rocking her head back and forth. If it was concentrated near her Tallest's heart and lung area, it posed a fatal threat if the spheres came out again. What confused her was that it hadn't happened already. What did it react to? When would it react? Would any warning signs be given?
Peprik chewed her bottom lip and gazed upward. The answers would come only by more testing. But every time she performed them, Purple looked more helpless and lonely. It was all in his eyes, which, instead of the healthy, rich violet they had been, had withdrawn in their grandeur to a dusty, pale lavender. He approved the tests only because he had to. She could tell. Then again, Tallest Red...
Peprik grinned weakly as she thought of Red. He was worried, all right. She had seen the hatred boiling in his crimson eyes at the thought of his partner being put in the tube. The two were bonded by a simple vow of leadership; one could not make due without the other. They were used to it.
She perked her antennae. She would have to put her Tallest through another test again. Not that he wouldn't make it...but he would have to go through an extra recuperation day. She shook her head. It had to be done.
Wearily pushing herself out of the chair, Peprik made her way over to the door and passed into the hall leading up to the testing room. She hoped Red wasn't following her. That would be a problem.
Purple was figuring out the velocity of the Massive compared to the Flagships when Peprik trudged in. He barely glanced at her as she set the huge machine up for work. "Bad day?"
Peprik shook her head. "Maybe..."
Purple stopped scribbling on the side of the tube with his finger and looked at the machine behind him. "Another test?"
"I'm afraid so," Peprik admitted, turning the test tube around so it faced a giant piece of machinery that looked like a super sized laser. "This one's quite awkward, since you'll still be in the tube. This will record what the white substance is doing to you."
"Did you find anything unusual about the sample you took earlier?"
Peprik ran her hand over a thin rectangle of glass. The machinery powered up. "I can't understand it," she admitted, "so I'm running this to clarify some...suspicions."
She sat back and watched as the laser fired a thin ray of crimson light onto Purple's chest. A screen came up in front of it. There was Purple's chest armor; as the laser drilled in she could see his light green skin break. The laser hit the first obstacle--his aorta--and spread its light around the proximity. Peprik, her heart in her throat, enlarged the hologram and cleared it.
At first, all she saw was his slowly beating heart, with just a few jumps and halts. But as it became more defined, she saw that his left and right ventricles were coated with the white stuff, along with the heavily burdened aorta. It was covered with the infectious blob all the way past his heart to the lower lung area. His lungs, on the other hand, were clear, except for an unnatural shadow on the lower lung area. As she watched, the white stuff spread itself down the aorta in slow waves every couple of heartbeats.
Peprik blinked, unbelieving. She stepped away from the monitor. The dust shadow...was that the stuff that was hidden in the white mass?
Purple looked at her. "Something wrong? What, do I really look that bad?"
Peprik's eyes filled with tears. "S...sir? W...will you excuse me...fo...for a sec...ond..."
Purple watched her as she stumbled out into the hall. Pressing her back against the cold wall, she internally battled to keep the grief from overwhelming her. The disease had spread much faster than she had planned for. He could not shake this off in time for them to find a serum.
"Peprik?"
Peprik hiccuped and looked upward. Red was standing there, concerned. "What's wrong? Other doctors chewing you up again?"
Peprik shook her head wildly, her antennae swinging. "Tallest Purple...Sir...he's...the white...it's covering his...it's suffocating him, sir. I can't find a serum to stop it in time! It's gone too far..."
The news struck Red like a punch in the stomach, but he held emotions down to ask one question. "How much time do you think he has?"
Peprik wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "Considering...this started...several...months...ago...I predict..."
She hiccuped. "I'd stretch it out to...two or three more..."
Red's antennae dropped against his skull. "Have you told him?"
She shook her head.
Red snorted softly, then opened the door. "I'm always the hero."
O.o
Nne: Yes, yes, very amusing! I type lots... To answer some questions about how he got it (I realize it's not the best plot), go back to the first two chapters and read!! The Jacker makes a stretching motion...yeah, that part. Kind of a context thingie.
Pur: *rolls eyes* Yeah. Context. Your fics are bologna! Or is it baloney...?
Nne: I hate that word!! Next month comes soon!