Chapter 2
Authors Note: Yay, second chapters up! Hehehe, remember, tell me whatcha think, feel free to say it sucks lol. Well yes, my story is INCREDIBLY boring and all, but suffer with me or just read a better story, I recommend the Wizard of Ak, great story by Nadine. Anyway, yeah, ignore any mistakes and crud you'll find, if I wrote this, its bound to suck anyway. - Amanda ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------
Skool went by miserably slow that day, Ari took care to avoid all contact with Dib, he was just plain weird, like an overly happy child with a case of insanity..She decided to keep the hopeful partnership idea under wraps, she didn't want anyone finding out for some reason, mainly because she became paranoid of Dib.
Ari almost cried with joy when the bell rang out at the end of the day, the students' only way of happiness in Miss Bitters class was made from that glorious bell..But enough about that, Ari had caught up with Zim, who walked surprisingly fast. She checked behind her for anyone watching but it appeared to be safe. The two said nothing until they reached Zim's house. Ari didn't take a step onto his walkway until he pulled out a key chain- like object and typed in a few numbers. The gnomes appeared to have been deactivated as Zim walked through with Ari tailing close behind..She didn't like lasers or guns as much as swords, they were cheating weapons, and always would be to her.
Somewhere, far, far, off in the middle of a galaxy, aboard the Massive ship, Almighty Tallest Red fell down on the floor clutching his head in pain.
Purple rolled his eyes in disgust as Red cried out, "Laser-senses-TINGLING! Someone-disliking-lasers! Aghhhhhh!" Red continued to twitch while Purple continued eating his nachos. I like nachos.
Ahem, back to the story..
Ari, just beginning to feel like her life was about to go right stepped inside the oddly shaped door of Zim's house. Before she could say another word, Zim's gloved hand covered her mouth and nose in a liquid soaked rag, and Ari fell unconscious. The last thing she heard was, " Heh, stupid Humans.."
Gir sat in the middle of Zim's lab while sticking stuff to the floor with nacho cheese and paste. He had just started on making a rubber piggy tower when Zim's enraged cry rang out through the house.
Gir ran over to Zim, his metallic legs clinking on the hard floor. "What is it master? Did they get the pizza wrong?" he said innocently.
"No Gir, they did NOT get the pizza wrong, every single one of these plans, every one, is in code! And the computer has never seen it before, it doesn't exist on Earth!"
"Maybe the human made it up to play G.I. Joe with!"
Zim returned a blank stare at his crazed little robot when his eyes lit up. "GIR! YOUR RIGHT!"
"Finally."
"No, not really, but in a way you've given me an idea! The Ari human has obviously made the code as a fail-safe plan, so I would have to let her join me to decode the plans.. Ingenious for a human really, but still I have a way to win.."GIR! Attach the human to the brain pulse reader, we will see where she's keeping the information that we need by going inside her mind..Plus we can see all her embarrassing memories!" added Zim as a bonus.
Gir had too much trouble trying to life Ari into the chair-like machine so Zim was forced to do it. Ari sat slumped over in a large black and purple chair complete with wires from the back connecting to the large computer screen Zim would talk to the tallest on. Gir had actually managed to get the Brain Pulse Band onto Ari's head, or as Gir called it the Head Psychic."
Gir obediently brought his own chair and a horrible buttery bag of popcorn, which made Zim so sick he was forced to sit in his own chair 7 feet away. Shaking off the stench of butter that lingered heavily in the air, Zim turned on the band. Instantly, millions of memories flooded onto the screen, some larger than others. "I suppose that means they are more important to her..Fascinating."
Zim and Gir watched some of them, at least 30, and most were very unhappy ones. Ones where Ari had tried to runaway but ended up starving and returning back home 8 days later. Another was when she had her 13th birthday party she had been planning all year (It was VERY large on the screen) and her mother had been too busy to send out invitations. Smaller memories of her crying, drawing, and writing but Zim hadn't found the code yet.
"ZIM WILL NOT GIVE UP!" he said triumphantly as he began searching once more.
Ari's eyes twitched unpleasantly as the effects began wearing off. It felt as though millions of needles were stabbing into her mind all at once, over and over again!
Meanwhile, Zim had stumbled onto a section full of dreams, most where day dreams that were gruesome and twisted, others of her being half animal and half human where she ran free..Zim found this quite odd. Surely other humans weren't like Ari, he had brain pulsed many others and he had never seen things like this before.
Ari's eyes and arms now twitched in unison as Gir smeared a buttery smiley face on her shirtfront. His insane giggling was almost enough to drive her insane, luckily Zim yelled at him to stop.
He had found something very sad in a way..It was a very vivid dream, with the lines of what appeared to be a song in the background. It showed Ari and strangers all around her, laughing and prodding and teasing, others shoving her in the dirt while more and more gathered to see her. She was trapped now, and then everyone exploded away in a burst of blue and black, images of an older man who appeared to be her father packing a suitcase and leaving. He kissed her and said, "Don't worry sweetie, I'll be back soon!" more images and song, then a gravestone saying Luke Jones on it. Now it showed a picture of Ari standing there while tears fell in the background. By the time the dream was done, Zim had searched for everything. But he was busy thinking of this new odd feeling that burned inside of him to be angry at having failed to locate the code breaker.
"Computer! Analyze this emotion, quickly!" Zim shouted out to the computer as a thin cable shot out from the computer into his I.D. Pak.
"Emotion is Pity and Sadness. Caused by unknown source." said the computer monotonously.
"Pity? What is this Pity?! Zim lets no one have his pity! Computer, define pity!"
Before the computer could respond, Ari spat "Pity is when you feel bad for someone because they've had it worse than you, and because they know deep inside their worthless and always will be. And I don't need your pity Zim, don't waste it on me." Ari's head hung nearly limp, talking while the brain pulse reader was on was extremely tiring and made her head feel as if it were to explode with each word.
"What the-? How are you awake?! No human ever is able to regain consciousness while the machine is on-Oh no!!" said Zim; barely realizing he and Gir both had no disguises on. But his decision would make it so that disguises would no longer matter.
"Gir!"
"Yes, master?!"
"Un-strap the Ari human and bring her upstairs to the living room and let her rest."
"We can keep her!?" asked Gir with enthusiasm.
"Maybe if your good and do as your told Gir." said Zim with a smile.
"Yayyy!" screamed Gir as he propelled himself over to Ari and unlocked the steel cuffs that held her arms and feet to the chair. He ran off somewhere and shortly returned with something that resembled the voot runner carrier, except it was long and square shaped. Easily Enough Ari (with Zim's help) was slid onto the carrier and brought up to the living room.
Ari was running, through a hallway of horrible eyes all gleaming and shining with evil intentions, gunshots echoed in the background along with the voices of people talking casually. Ari stumbled and instead of falling down she fell through what she thought was the floor into a box like room. Strange shapes whirled about her, dragons and griffins and others. Ari seemed to smile before huge jaws of a deep red something enveloped her into inky blackness.
The 14-year-old girl sat up straight. She was in a strange place, this wasn't her room! Ari was more confused than scared though, she had always hoped to just fall asleep and wake up in another place..Although this wasn't what she meant. Ari placed a hand to her head where an unpleasant tingling sensation was, that jolted her back to her senses; she was at Zim's house!
"That conniving little alien! If he doesn't want my partnership then fine, I really don't care anymore, as long as he hurries up with his destruction of the human race thing, it doesn't really matter to me." said Ari, a result of having no other friends was that she had begun to converse with herself.
Zim stood in the doorway; two blazing red eyes shone through the darkness slowly approached her. A silhouette stood in front of Ari as she started to space off, luckily for her she noticed that the light had dimmed much more from the window since Zim was in front of it.
"Hello Zim, why aren't I dead yet?" said Ari simply.
"Because human, I have decided to use your plans, but I will er.require your assistance in decoding them."
"You weren't able to find the information you needed were you." A smile snaked its way across Ari's face.
"No..I chose not to um..find it because you would be much more useful to me alive. Plus I'm going to make you decode the maps yourself." Zim said, obviously not used to asking.
A rather evil smirk appeared on Ari's face. "But Zim, what do I get in return for helping you out? Think about it, I know earths defenses, Human law enforcement, their latest technology, I can be very useful to you Zim, but how would you repay me for it?"
"What on Irk do you mean? You get the honor of 'helping' the almighty ZIM! Does that not feed your human thirst???"
"Never mind Zim, we'll work that out as we go."
"You humans.."said Zim with a short sigh. "But first, I can not allow you to leave my house until I can be sure that you won't er," Zim had a faint recollection of Ari's sword tip at his neck the last time they talked about loyalties. "Betray m-" he paused at the murderous glare from Ari.
"Don't even finish that sentence Zim, if there's one thing I am, its loyal. Never forget that Zim, never." Ari put much emphasis on "never".
"Fine then, but as I was saying, you will be kept here until I consider you trustworthy enough."
"So your saying I can't leave here until you know I won't tell everyone about you? Oh that is so lame..But what about my house, let me go home tonight, you can come with me if you want, I've got to set everything up so no one notices my disappearance." Ari ignored the fact that her mother only came home 1 every 2 weeks and had a maid clean the house and give Ari food money.
"On one condition..." smiled Zim as Gir walked out of the kitchen.
Soon a very unhappy looking Ari walked out of Zim's house after she was sure the gnomes were off wearing a very thick glowing collar and leash with matching glowing wrist cuffs. Gir pranced happily about them in the chilly night air, his dog suit making squeaky noises randomly. Zim held the other end of the leash as an embarrassed Ari led the way to her house.
"I just hope the weirdoes don't eat us." said Ari calmly as Zim shuddered with disgust. (Or maybe it was fright? Ah well. Anyway-)
Ari glanced around as a clock struck 3 A.M. Sighing, Ari continued walking although she quickened her pace when she heard more than 3 pairs of feet walking, but it only turned out to be a cat.
Soon they reached a normal sized house with an incredibly amount of scientific alarms. Ari had to argue with Zim for a while to let her have the handcuffs off so she could turn off the alarms for him. Ari slid her hand under a fake patch of grass near the mailbox and pulled out a key. She yanked the flag down on the mailbox to reveal a keyhole.
"Much more difficult than a key chain Zim." she said in a playful teasing voice. Zim made a wry face. As the alarms were shut off, Ari climbed up a plant riddled ladder that lead to an old abandoned tree house next to her 3rd floor window. Bracing herself for lacerations, she leapt from a far tree branch and met full contact with the window. Glass shattered as Ari checked herself over on the floor of her room, only finding two cuts on her; she walked over to her bed and pulled out a small duffel bag. With her free bleeding arm and hand Ari had used to protect her face it was hard to pack. Soon enough she had clothing, and whatever else she would need. Although she knew to bring only essentials, she couldn't leave behind her sword.
Ari slid the scabbard on and put her trusty sword into its place as she threw her duffel bag out the window. After she then emptied the family piggy bank, which was a minor sum of about 300 dollars.
(It was a good thing her mother was a well paid scientist sometimes) Ari thought to herself as she held her bleeding arm with an equally bloody hand. She leapt from tree branch to tree branch until she was low enough to jump to solid ground seeing as how her arm would only get worse if she used the ladder, plus bloody handprints were never a good thing to be found when your missing.
Zim put on a look of revolt as Ari held out her bloody limbs to be handcuffed again. Instead Zim just put the leash on her. It seemed all three of them walked a bit faster this time, except for when Gir almost blew their cover for shouting out "TACOS" when they passed a Crazy Taco billboard.
"What IS that on your arms?" asked Zim in an oddly curios voice. "And why do Humans secrete it at odd and inconvenient times?"
"This, Zim, is blood." Ari said in a pained voice, obviously her cut was deeper than she had thought while her arm dripped an unsightly trail as the three walked. "Humans have it to keep them alive kinda, it gives our muscles oxygen, like if you lose too much blood, your organs stop working cuz they don't get enough air sometimes, and you get cramps and stuff." Ari sighed in relief as she spotted Zim's eerily glowing house.
"Weird..Then why is your blood red? And mine is green?" he asked, his curiosity almost becoming unbearable.
"Zim, please, just get me a towel or something, then we can talk more about blood, but first make sure I don't lose all of mine.."she smiled despite the not-so-humorous situation.
"Oh, ok. Gir run ahead and shut off the gnome field and bring the human a towel!"
"Yes, my master! Towelly for da kangaroo!" said Gir in his usually high- pitched voice. Ari wondered what their conversation sounded like to the people she hoped were still asleep. By the time Ari was back on the couch, she had started hallucinating for some reason. (Hopefully from loss of blood lol)
"Wow, I didn't know that hippos could do that!" she voiced, causing Zim to shoot her a more than confused look as he wrapped a towel around her arm and hand. Ari's eyes flashed at the sense of something unknown touching her. She whipped out her dagger that she used to intimidate Dib and nearly sliced off on of Zim's antennae.
"Computer, Recovery Bay!" said an unnerved Zim as the entire couch slowly sank down 3 floors while he restrained Ari. Before the couch had stopped, Ari had lost consciousness. (She seems to do that a lot in this story doesn't she?) Zim panicked, this human was the only way to decode the plans, if all of her "blood" ran out, then he would never be able to understand the foreign language!
"Computer, Search for Human Blood Loss Recovery Process! Quickly!"
Gir quietly walked over to Ari as she was transported from the couch to a flat, padded tube-like container. Zim followed the instructions the computer had given him while muttering Irken curses about humans and their blood under his breath.
Soon Ari had a crude yet sufficient enough bandage on her arm, at least the blood flow had stopped. Another bandage adorned her left hand along with scratches from the tree branches.
Zim sat with his face pressed up against the glass lid of Ari's containment chamber to keep out all germs while circulating air still. (Through his other lab patients he had disturbingly found out that humans needed air..) He went back to thinking when he noticed Ari's bag laid on the couch. He went over to it and sat down as he rummaged through it. There was a picture of three people, Ari as a smaller stinkbeast, along with two others who appeared to have been her creators.
Zim studied the face of the man closely, and realized that it was the same man from her dream! "How strange, her dreams reflect her life, I've never seen this before in a human."
Soon Zim had found Ari's sketchbook, he peered at her drawings, more dragons and monsters, then some dark comics and- a spaceship design model? As Zim flipped more to the back of the book, models and blueprint designs littered each page for a complex ship, what astounded Zim so much though was that her theories were very close to Irken Science.."Another odd look was shot at the human that laid silently in the tank next to Zim.
"I hope this works.."said the alien as he curled up on the couch and slept.
Authors Note: Yay, second chapters up! Hehehe, remember, tell me whatcha think, feel free to say it sucks lol. Well yes, my story is INCREDIBLY boring and all, but suffer with me or just read a better story, I recommend the Wizard of Ak, great story by Nadine. Anyway, yeah, ignore any mistakes and crud you'll find, if I wrote this, its bound to suck anyway. - Amanda ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------
Skool went by miserably slow that day, Ari took care to avoid all contact with Dib, he was just plain weird, like an overly happy child with a case of insanity..She decided to keep the hopeful partnership idea under wraps, she didn't want anyone finding out for some reason, mainly because she became paranoid of Dib.
Ari almost cried with joy when the bell rang out at the end of the day, the students' only way of happiness in Miss Bitters class was made from that glorious bell..But enough about that, Ari had caught up with Zim, who walked surprisingly fast. She checked behind her for anyone watching but it appeared to be safe. The two said nothing until they reached Zim's house. Ari didn't take a step onto his walkway until he pulled out a key chain- like object and typed in a few numbers. The gnomes appeared to have been deactivated as Zim walked through with Ari tailing close behind..She didn't like lasers or guns as much as swords, they were cheating weapons, and always would be to her.
Somewhere, far, far, off in the middle of a galaxy, aboard the Massive ship, Almighty Tallest Red fell down on the floor clutching his head in pain.
Purple rolled his eyes in disgust as Red cried out, "Laser-senses-TINGLING! Someone-disliking-lasers! Aghhhhhh!" Red continued to twitch while Purple continued eating his nachos. I like nachos.
Ahem, back to the story..
Ari, just beginning to feel like her life was about to go right stepped inside the oddly shaped door of Zim's house. Before she could say another word, Zim's gloved hand covered her mouth and nose in a liquid soaked rag, and Ari fell unconscious. The last thing she heard was, " Heh, stupid Humans.."
Gir sat in the middle of Zim's lab while sticking stuff to the floor with nacho cheese and paste. He had just started on making a rubber piggy tower when Zim's enraged cry rang out through the house.
Gir ran over to Zim, his metallic legs clinking on the hard floor. "What is it master? Did they get the pizza wrong?" he said innocently.
"No Gir, they did NOT get the pizza wrong, every single one of these plans, every one, is in code! And the computer has never seen it before, it doesn't exist on Earth!"
"Maybe the human made it up to play G.I. Joe with!"
Zim returned a blank stare at his crazed little robot when his eyes lit up. "GIR! YOUR RIGHT!"
"Finally."
"No, not really, but in a way you've given me an idea! The Ari human has obviously made the code as a fail-safe plan, so I would have to let her join me to decode the plans.. Ingenious for a human really, but still I have a way to win.."GIR! Attach the human to the brain pulse reader, we will see where she's keeping the information that we need by going inside her mind..Plus we can see all her embarrassing memories!" added Zim as a bonus.
Gir had too much trouble trying to life Ari into the chair-like machine so Zim was forced to do it. Ari sat slumped over in a large black and purple chair complete with wires from the back connecting to the large computer screen Zim would talk to the tallest on. Gir had actually managed to get the Brain Pulse Band onto Ari's head, or as Gir called it the Head Psychic."
Gir obediently brought his own chair and a horrible buttery bag of popcorn, which made Zim so sick he was forced to sit in his own chair 7 feet away. Shaking off the stench of butter that lingered heavily in the air, Zim turned on the band. Instantly, millions of memories flooded onto the screen, some larger than others. "I suppose that means they are more important to her..Fascinating."
Zim and Gir watched some of them, at least 30, and most were very unhappy ones. Ones where Ari had tried to runaway but ended up starving and returning back home 8 days later. Another was when she had her 13th birthday party she had been planning all year (It was VERY large on the screen) and her mother had been too busy to send out invitations. Smaller memories of her crying, drawing, and writing but Zim hadn't found the code yet.
"ZIM WILL NOT GIVE UP!" he said triumphantly as he began searching once more.
Ari's eyes twitched unpleasantly as the effects began wearing off. It felt as though millions of needles were stabbing into her mind all at once, over and over again!
Meanwhile, Zim had stumbled onto a section full of dreams, most where day dreams that were gruesome and twisted, others of her being half animal and half human where she ran free..Zim found this quite odd. Surely other humans weren't like Ari, he had brain pulsed many others and he had never seen things like this before.
Ari's eyes and arms now twitched in unison as Gir smeared a buttery smiley face on her shirtfront. His insane giggling was almost enough to drive her insane, luckily Zim yelled at him to stop.
He had found something very sad in a way..It was a very vivid dream, with the lines of what appeared to be a song in the background. It showed Ari and strangers all around her, laughing and prodding and teasing, others shoving her in the dirt while more and more gathered to see her. She was trapped now, and then everyone exploded away in a burst of blue and black, images of an older man who appeared to be her father packing a suitcase and leaving. He kissed her and said, "Don't worry sweetie, I'll be back soon!" more images and song, then a gravestone saying Luke Jones on it. Now it showed a picture of Ari standing there while tears fell in the background. By the time the dream was done, Zim had searched for everything. But he was busy thinking of this new odd feeling that burned inside of him to be angry at having failed to locate the code breaker.
"Computer! Analyze this emotion, quickly!" Zim shouted out to the computer as a thin cable shot out from the computer into his I.D. Pak.
"Emotion is Pity and Sadness. Caused by unknown source." said the computer monotonously.
"Pity? What is this Pity?! Zim lets no one have his pity! Computer, define pity!"
Before the computer could respond, Ari spat "Pity is when you feel bad for someone because they've had it worse than you, and because they know deep inside their worthless and always will be. And I don't need your pity Zim, don't waste it on me." Ari's head hung nearly limp, talking while the brain pulse reader was on was extremely tiring and made her head feel as if it were to explode with each word.
"What the-? How are you awake?! No human ever is able to regain consciousness while the machine is on-Oh no!!" said Zim; barely realizing he and Gir both had no disguises on. But his decision would make it so that disguises would no longer matter.
"Gir!"
"Yes, master?!"
"Un-strap the Ari human and bring her upstairs to the living room and let her rest."
"We can keep her!?" asked Gir with enthusiasm.
"Maybe if your good and do as your told Gir." said Zim with a smile.
"Yayyy!" screamed Gir as he propelled himself over to Ari and unlocked the steel cuffs that held her arms and feet to the chair. He ran off somewhere and shortly returned with something that resembled the voot runner carrier, except it was long and square shaped. Easily Enough Ari (with Zim's help) was slid onto the carrier and brought up to the living room.
Ari was running, through a hallway of horrible eyes all gleaming and shining with evil intentions, gunshots echoed in the background along with the voices of people talking casually. Ari stumbled and instead of falling down she fell through what she thought was the floor into a box like room. Strange shapes whirled about her, dragons and griffins and others. Ari seemed to smile before huge jaws of a deep red something enveloped her into inky blackness.
The 14-year-old girl sat up straight. She was in a strange place, this wasn't her room! Ari was more confused than scared though, she had always hoped to just fall asleep and wake up in another place..Although this wasn't what she meant. Ari placed a hand to her head where an unpleasant tingling sensation was, that jolted her back to her senses; she was at Zim's house!
"That conniving little alien! If he doesn't want my partnership then fine, I really don't care anymore, as long as he hurries up with his destruction of the human race thing, it doesn't really matter to me." said Ari, a result of having no other friends was that she had begun to converse with herself.
Zim stood in the doorway; two blazing red eyes shone through the darkness slowly approached her. A silhouette stood in front of Ari as she started to space off, luckily for her she noticed that the light had dimmed much more from the window since Zim was in front of it.
"Hello Zim, why aren't I dead yet?" said Ari simply.
"Because human, I have decided to use your plans, but I will er.require your assistance in decoding them."
"You weren't able to find the information you needed were you." A smile snaked its way across Ari's face.
"No..I chose not to um..find it because you would be much more useful to me alive. Plus I'm going to make you decode the maps yourself." Zim said, obviously not used to asking.
A rather evil smirk appeared on Ari's face. "But Zim, what do I get in return for helping you out? Think about it, I know earths defenses, Human law enforcement, their latest technology, I can be very useful to you Zim, but how would you repay me for it?"
"What on Irk do you mean? You get the honor of 'helping' the almighty ZIM! Does that not feed your human thirst???"
"Never mind Zim, we'll work that out as we go."
"You humans.."said Zim with a short sigh. "But first, I can not allow you to leave my house until I can be sure that you won't er," Zim had a faint recollection of Ari's sword tip at his neck the last time they talked about loyalties. "Betray m-" he paused at the murderous glare from Ari.
"Don't even finish that sentence Zim, if there's one thing I am, its loyal. Never forget that Zim, never." Ari put much emphasis on "never".
"Fine then, but as I was saying, you will be kept here until I consider you trustworthy enough."
"So your saying I can't leave here until you know I won't tell everyone about you? Oh that is so lame..But what about my house, let me go home tonight, you can come with me if you want, I've got to set everything up so no one notices my disappearance." Ari ignored the fact that her mother only came home 1 every 2 weeks and had a maid clean the house and give Ari food money.
"On one condition..." smiled Zim as Gir walked out of the kitchen.
Soon a very unhappy looking Ari walked out of Zim's house after she was sure the gnomes were off wearing a very thick glowing collar and leash with matching glowing wrist cuffs. Gir pranced happily about them in the chilly night air, his dog suit making squeaky noises randomly. Zim held the other end of the leash as an embarrassed Ari led the way to her house.
"I just hope the weirdoes don't eat us." said Ari calmly as Zim shuddered with disgust. (Or maybe it was fright? Ah well. Anyway-)
Ari glanced around as a clock struck 3 A.M. Sighing, Ari continued walking although she quickened her pace when she heard more than 3 pairs of feet walking, but it only turned out to be a cat.
Soon they reached a normal sized house with an incredibly amount of scientific alarms. Ari had to argue with Zim for a while to let her have the handcuffs off so she could turn off the alarms for him. Ari slid her hand under a fake patch of grass near the mailbox and pulled out a key. She yanked the flag down on the mailbox to reveal a keyhole.
"Much more difficult than a key chain Zim." she said in a playful teasing voice. Zim made a wry face. As the alarms were shut off, Ari climbed up a plant riddled ladder that lead to an old abandoned tree house next to her 3rd floor window. Bracing herself for lacerations, she leapt from a far tree branch and met full contact with the window. Glass shattered as Ari checked herself over on the floor of her room, only finding two cuts on her; she walked over to her bed and pulled out a small duffel bag. With her free bleeding arm and hand Ari had used to protect her face it was hard to pack. Soon enough she had clothing, and whatever else she would need. Although she knew to bring only essentials, she couldn't leave behind her sword.
Ari slid the scabbard on and put her trusty sword into its place as she threw her duffel bag out the window. After she then emptied the family piggy bank, which was a minor sum of about 300 dollars.
(It was a good thing her mother was a well paid scientist sometimes) Ari thought to herself as she held her bleeding arm with an equally bloody hand. She leapt from tree branch to tree branch until she was low enough to jump to solid ground seeing as how her arm would only get worse if she used the ladder, plus bloody handprints were never a good thing to be found when your missing.
Zim put on a look of revolt as Ari held out her bloody limbs to be handcuffed again. Instead Zim just put the leash on her. It seemed all three of them walked a bit faster this time, except for when Gir almost blew their cover for shouting out "TACOS" when they passed a Crazy Taco billboard.
"What IS that on your arms?" asked Zim in an oddly curios voice. "And why do Humans secrete it at odd and inconvenient times?"
"This, Zim, is blood." Ari said in a pained voice, obviously her cut was deeper than she had thought while her arm dripped an unsightly trail as the three walked. "Humans have it to keep them alive kinda, it gives our muscles oxygen, like if you lose too much blood, your organs stop working cuz they don't get enough air sometimes, and you get cramps and stuff." Ari sighed in relief as she spotted Zim's eerily glowing house.
"Weird..Then why is your blood red? And mine is green?" he asked, his curiosity almost becoming unbearable.
"Zim, please, just get me a towel or something, then we can talk more about blood, but first make sure I don't lose all of mine.."she smiled despite the not-so-humorous situation.
"Oh, ok. Gir run ahead and shut off the gnome field and bring the human a towel!"
"Yes, my master! Towelly for da kangaroo!" said Gir in his usually high- pitched voice. Ari wondered what their conversation sounded like to the people she hoped were still asleep. By the time Ari was back on the couch, she had started hallucinating for some reason. (Hopefully from loss of blood lol)
"Wow, I didn't know that hippos could do that!" she voiced, causing Zim to shoot her a more than confused look as he wrapped a towel around her arm and hand. Ari's eyes flashed at the sense of something unknown touching her. She whipped out her dagger that she used to intimidate Dib and nearly sliced off on of Zim's antennae.
"Computer, Recovery Bay!" said an unnerved Zim as the entire couch slowly sank down 3 floors while he restrained Ari. Before the couch had stopped, Ari had lost consciousness. (She seems to do that a lot in this story doesn't she?) Zim panicked, this human was the only way to decode the plans, if all of her "blood" ran out, then he would never be able to understand the foreign language!
"Computer, Search for Human Blood Loss Recovery Process! Quickly!"
Gir quietly walked over to Ari as she was transported from the couch to a flat, padded tube-like container. Zim followed the instructions the computer had given him while muttering Irken curses about humans and their blood under his breath.
Soon Ari had a crude yet sufficient enough bandage on her arm, at least the blood flow had stopped. Another bandage adorned her left hand along with scratches from the tree branches.
Zim sat with his face pressed up against the glass lid of Ari's containment chamber to keep out all germs while circulating air still. (Through his other lab patients he had disturbingly found out that humans needed air..) He went back to thinking when he noticed Ari's bag laid on the couch. He went over to it and sat down as he rummaged through it. There was a picture of three people, Ari as a smaller stinkbeast, along with two others who appeared to have been her creators.
Zim studied the face of the man closely, and realized that it was the same man from her dream! "How strange, her dreams reflect her life, I've never seen this before in a human."
Soon Zim had found Ari's sketchbook, he peered at her drawings, more dragons and monsters, then some dark comics and- a spaceship design model? As Zim flipped more to the back of the book, models and blueprint designs littered each page for a complex ship, what astounded Zim so much though was that her theories were very close to Irken Science.."Another odd look was shot at the human that laid silently in the tank next to Zim.
"I hope this works.."said the alien as he curled up on the couch and slept.