A soft shaking awoke me from my slumber. My eyes creaked open to meet the concerned ones of the girl who had taken me in. I grinned weakly and croaked, "I'm lying in your bed and I still don't know your name."

She blushed a dark shade of purple, almost matching her eyes, and replied, "I see you can talk... My name's Ira. What's yours?"

A spasm of coughing racked my immobile body, from the pain of speaking with a meat-raw throat. "Dib."

Ira nodded, and kneeled on the floor next to the bed. "I'm going to turn you over and put the cream in your pak, so it'll pump the stuff through your bloodstream." She put her hands on my shoulders and rolled me over like a turkey. I was extremely startled as she inhaled sharply. "You don't HAVE a pak! We have to get you to the hospital!" The girl swept me up and ran at full speed before I could explain that I didn't need one.

The doors to the hospital opened with a hiss, and we barreled in. Ira lobbed me down onto the ditzy receptionist's counter and nearly screamed, "HE HAS NO PAK! He must have lost it when he crashed! Is there any way you can get him a new one?!"

I rolled off the counter and stood up indignantly. "I don't need a pak. I don't even know what a pak IS." The receptionist screamed for a doctor.

Ira patted my head. "You're just delirious. Once we get a new pak on you, you'll be fine." A grotesque creature hopped out of one of the many doors spaced around the room. It had eight arms and one huge, webbed foot. Many multicolored eyes hung like fruits on stalks on top of its bulbous, headless body, and bits of it were metal-plated with readout screens. One of its six-fingered, flexible hands held an enormous drill. Another hand reached for me, a hatch on its palm opening and spritzing out a thick green mist. I slumped to the floor and fell into a deep slumber.

I was greeted when I awoke by an enormous orange eye of the doctor-thing. Five of its hands prodded me for signs of injury while the other three washed off the menacing-looking tools. The drill was covered in a dark-green glop, which I quickly recognized as my own flesh and blood. The creature made its way over to me in great, low leaps. A slash appeared horizontally across its body, and it opened to reveal a cavernous mouth totally covered in deadly sharp teeth. The monster looked like it was going to fall in half, but instead gusts of stinking breath washed over me as it spoke in a buzzing monotone.

"I have just installed a standard-issue civilian Identification Pak in you, citizen. It includes spider legs, object relocation device, binoculars, jetpack, memory drive, atmospheric processor, charger, laser cutters, claw, ID plug, shield generator..." As it was droning, I slipped out the door and tried to run out of the building altogether, but Ira, who I hadn't noticed sitting down, grabbed my arm.

"Looks like you're fine now. We need to find a place for you to live."

I felt anger bubbling up inside me. Out of my new ID pak sprouted a quartet of appendages – I'd seen them on Zim before, and I recognized them as the 'spider legs' the doctor had mentioned. I reared up on them, towering over Ira. "You've dragged me all over the place, doing ridiculous things, when I've clearly been alive for more than ten minutes without your stupid 'pak'! You're controlling and pushy and I don't need you!" One of the legs shot out and slashed her. A pained expression crossed her face as she clutched at her abdomen, trying to hold her organs inside. Blood leaked between her fingers. Her eyes clouded over, and her pak gave off a great shower of sparks before exploding and annihilating the body totally.

I looked on in horror. One of the aliens sitting around had the sense to stop gaping and press a small button on the wall. An alarm started blaring, and seven huge robots smashed through the walls. They aimed giant miniguns at me and fired.