A/N: Yay. This chapter was fun. It's quite significant, too, though it may not seem so now.

I realize that this particular fic has gotten little response, which is understandable. Fancharacters are unfamiliar and people don't really like them. Hell, I don't like most of them. It was bold of me to begin this fanfic with my Irkens. But hey, authors don't really write to please the masses. I'm no sell-out. I'm doing this for me. Besides, my OC's won't bite…well Hexa might…but still, they're not going to deflower poor Zim or anything. Ahem.RR is still appreciated, though. Okay, so ends my modest little plea for recognition.

Chapter II – A Call

Mistress and I were very docile for those forty years we spent on Retreatia. For kicks, we often conducted experiments on alien life forms. I seldom questioned where the aliens came from, but one day, when I did ask her, she told me that the alien had crash-landed on our planet. Even I, at a very tender age found this hard to believe.

She thought me dumber than I really was. Looking back on it, it is understandable, because a "learning" Irken such as myself had no standards to be compared to. She had no way to judge how quickly I was supposed to be able to comprehend things.

The species of alien that we most worked on were from Planet Pocky. The flared end of what I recognized to be an oversized screw was protruding from its head. It was relatively small, had webbed feet, and wore no clothing. Its body was flexible and moved like a bag of viscous jelly. They were, after all, a boneless people. My mistress was very enthralled about this, and told me that she wished she had a similar anatomy.

At that comment, even I saw her as a little eccentric.

Many of my years were spent like this. It was not long before I began to question my existence, I am sure humans are familiar with the activity. My life had no direction to it, it seemed. I was just a tiny thing in the universe on an equally tiny planet. What was I to do when my Mistress was no longer around to entertain me? I couldn't speak any other languages, so I figured that after she passed I'd die a miserably lonely death on a desolate planet.

Luckily, the tables turned.

Mistress never told me how important my purpose really was until that one day. The day we got a transmission from planet Irk.

That morning, she told me to fetch the Spittle Runner and bring it to the waterfront. This could have been seen as a test, because she'd just recently taught me how to pilot the ship. She congratulated me on my successful efforts when I soon after docked the Runner. It is easy deciphering between congratulation and praise now that I know what the latter feels like. But back then, the meaning of "praise" was not known to me. My mistress was a good one, considering there were no documents containing the instruction to raising Irken children, but I think had she praised me rather than congratulated me at moments such as this, I would now think better of myself. Her congratulation was so hollow.

"The modifications I've done to the Spittle Runner will enable it to double as a submersible, Skibby," she said, "Today we test it by harvesting the specimens of the deep."

I frowned. She had already gone over how the acoustics and the paneling and the volume of the ship were readied for under-water travel, but I still had my skepticism. I crawled into the cockpit reluctantly. Reluctance is another common trait among defective Irkens, I have found. She crawled in next to me and settled her back against the pilot's seat. Suddenly the ship reared and I heard the metallic clangor of the gears shifting. I struggled to keep from bouncing out of my safety straps. Mistress moved her body in unison to the bouncing, and I wished to do the same, but I lacked the steel will that she had. I was too nervous about burning under the surface of the ocean.

The runner lifted, hovered a few-hundred meters and then dropped as soon as Mistress pronounced that the depth was enough. We slowly slunk into the water. I wanted to close my eyes, but I was somehow captivated by the dirty green liquid that closed in on our ship. It was crawling up the window, and it cut my view from Retreatia's orange sky. I became panicky. I didn't recall ever not being able to see that sky.

I clasped my hands between my legs and bit my lip, though I was shivering. I didn't want to discourage my mistress, much less insult her. She did her best to teach me bravery, but bravery isn't a technique, it is a trait, and thus far in my life, danger was quite the foreign concept.

"Beautiful," she said, "The ship is holding up perfectly."

I wished that I didn't know what water felt like exposed to my flesh. Being naïve might've lessened my fears.

We continued our descent and it became blacker and blacker until I could no longer see Mistress next to me. I groped around, until my hand caught the leg of her robe.

"Skibby," she scolded, "keep courage!"

I wondered how she could remain so calm. Just then, a heavy yellow glow flooded the cockpit. I had to squint at first, but once my eyes adjusted, I found that I was staring down the ugliest thing I'd ever seen. It must have been a marine creature, more than three times the size of my mistress in length. It had no arms or legs, but two lamp-like orbs on its face that I couldn't imagine being eyeballs. It's skin was a soiled-looking white which its internals were visible through. It had great, tapering tusks emerging from its bottom lip.

At this point, I concluded that I had to be in standby mode (if there is an Irken equivalent of sleep, it is standby, and we do dream). I pinched hard at my legs that were huddled in my gut, trying to escape this hideous little fantasy, but it wasn't to any avail. I was very much awake.

"My word…" Mistress chortled. When I looked to her she was taking hasty notes, a smirk sweeping her face, "I only wish our net was bigger. This thing would make a fantastic addition to our collection."

Usually when Mistress spoke, I was very attentive. Today, I just stared in dumbfounded fear at this beast. Was it…docile? I hoped that it wouldn't attack us. I'd been attacked once before by a screw-headed alien during one of our studies. It was not at all pleasant, but the screw-head didn't exactly have gnashing teeth and such a beastly appearance. "Mistress," I stuttered, "Can you t-talk to it?" I said this remembering that when the screw-head attacked me, my Mistress spoke in tongues and the alien relented its flogging of me.

"No," she answered, and then went on to explain why, but a sound from the front window caught my attention. I was staring down a crack in the windshield. The terror that filled me was unavoidable. I crawled up in my seat as a tiny jet of water drooled and a puddle condensed where my feet had just been.

"Mistress," I squeaked.

She hushed me. "Do you want to provoke it? It may not be as friendly as you think. Now observe how to use the camera."

The crack spread quickly, and though no water was spilling from it, I could tell that our ship was ready to crack under pressure. Mistress went on explaining things, but I couldn't be blamed for not listening. I called to her once again, this time saying, "The runner!"

I could tell she was growing tired of me. Her palm whipped my face. I gripped where she'd slapped me, but almost oblivious to the pain, because we were about to die.

Luckily, the tables turned.

A high-pitched tone sounded and red light pulsed on and off. A transmission! We would have to go back to the base immediately to answer it.

"Oh no," Mistress breathed. She sounded fearful, so I assumed that she'd discovered the window. Not the case, she was lamenting over the call.

I read the screen. "The Almighty Tallest".

She settled her back into the seat and picked at her lip. Finally she sighed, and spoke up urgently. "Skibby, we are going to surface now. When we get home, I want you to stay outside and bathe. You stink."

I was in no mood to retaliate, although I had cleaned myself the day before. If it got us out of the water sooner, I'd let her believe that I was stinky. The Runner switched gears and it shifted upward. I watched the hideous sea-creature shrink into the gloom as we surfaced. A huge sigh escaped me and the tension was gone from my chest.

But as we finally were suspended in air again, Mistress prodded the window gently with her finger and said, "Oh…Oh me." The glass gave way, and the windshield shattered with a shrill force. My head ached and I pulled at my antennae. It was too loud.

Mistress's green eyes were wide. "Nothing that can't be fixed," her voice rasped. There was a lot of anger behind those suppressed words.

With a broken window, we had to travel slowly. It took us twice as long to get home, but the transmitter pulsed all the while. Whoever was calling was patient. This was out of the ordinary, as our calls were almost primarily from alien telemarketers. My head had cleared since the ordeal in the water, and I pondered things that I didn't have time to under the surface. Who were these "Almighty Tallest" that were calling. The title indeed sounded authoritative, if not a little laughable.

We landed and Mistress bid me toward the cleaning stall. She hastened back to the house, probably to answer the call.

I wondered. Was it confidential? She never usually shooed me away when there was a call. Most of the alien callers spoke different languages that I couldn't comprehend anyway, so why now would she tell me I stank when I in fact—didn't stink? Why would she make me stay outside?

But orders were just that, orders. She could threaten physical punishment if I defied her.

I made for the stall, slowly, as I was preoccupied with my musings and theories as to why she'd do this. She may have been ordering a new shipment of the screw-headed people to experiment on. I knew she had an outside source for those test subjects, but had never seen it. She wanted to keep her provider secret from me, for reasons I didn't know.

The stall was clogged with cleansing powder. I had to brush the drain before I removed my uniform, put on my goggles, and began the stall's wind cycle.

The Irken don't take showers, we'd burn. We have specially designed wind pods—stalls—that blow the antibacterial powder I mentioned earlier over our bodies.

My bath was not long. I'd set the wind cycle for only two minutes. This for two reasons: I knew I didn't stink, and also my antennae didn't react well to the sound of the stall blustering.

Looking back on it, it was quite funny that our stall was in plain sight. We were the only two on our planet, so any spectators weren't expected. Mistress and I were also, somehow accustomed to seeing each other nude. It was so casual that it didn't even cross my mind however "wrong" it might've been. Irken biology is actually quite, shall we say, limited when compared with a human?

In any case, this later had to be corrected. It is not socially acceptable for an Irken to even think about being naked.

For a while, I sat outside the stall and pondered, dusting some of the excess powder off of my shoulders. I pulled my clothes back on. I headed back for the base. From behind the door, I heard my mistress scream. Nobly, I entered the house. This may have been a mistake.