A/N: This chapter was slow in development, because I needed a break. I'm a teenaged girl…sometimes I forget to act like one, so I wrangled up some buddies and we all went shopping and saw a movie and people-watched. :D

My History class gives me a lot of ideas.Why just today I was in there, and I was inspired to play out a really cool upcoming scene in my head. It's not that upcoming though…probably many, manychapters off. Nonetheless, the manifestation of that scene gave this story a whole new direction.
I should also give this particularly large thesaurus sitting in front of me some honorable mention…Ah, thesaurus, a junior author's best friend.
But above all else, nothing keeps me going like the comments from you, the invaluable reader. I am kisser o' asses.

Only two (or perhaps three) chapters more until we land on Earth. Huzzah!
Reason I liked this chapter: The word "DOOMBOT".GLEE! It's also the lengthiest chapter to date, go me. Oh yeah, then there's the teensiest reference to a metal band. But just keep in mind that this chapter will probably undergo some editing, because I'm not altogether content with it.

Totally inapplicable, but…Does anybody realize the resemblance of Zim's uniform to Piglet (from Pooh-Bear)? Ah, that amuses me to no end.

This rambling needs to stop now. I could make a story from my author's notes alone, they're so effing long. Too often do I piss myself off. RAR. On with el show...

Chapter V – Departure

I'll spare you a too detailed portrait of our last hours of freedom. Time crept slowly by. Time means much less to we Irken because we age slower than humans do. It was weird, though: had we a replacement windshield for the Spittle Runner, time would have been everything, as we'd be bustling to repair the ship and frantically packing the quintessential provisions.

But since the tables had turned against our favor, we had to wait instead.

I am a very impatient person. There was little I could think of that would ease my restlessness. Looking up at Mistress was painful. I would have liked to emulate her stoic behavior, but I was too faint of heart. I fidgeted, popped various joints of my skeleton, tangled my fingers in my antenna; there was nothing to do. Day-to-day leisure activities seemed so trivial at this moment. I wished Mistress would say something, it was useless for me to marinate in my own thoughts when soon everything would be revealed.

So I went right along performing awkward little gestures. I even went so far to hum a little tune.

This stirred Mistress Hexa.

I'd sung before, but not in front of her. She seldom cared much for music, so we never kept anything of much relevance in the house. She was shocked that I—so uninfluenced by music—would invent little melodies in my head and sing them out my mouth. I'd even go so far as to say she was impressed, though my voice isn't anything remarkable.

A rare look of accomplishment crossed her face. Not exactly a smile, I don't think she is capable of expressing her delight on that level, but she looked somewhat pleased.

Thusly, I was pleased. I hoped that by humming that song, I'd made up for ruining our lives to some extent. I was grateful for her again, ready to shun the memory of her harsh punishment.

I reveled in the thought of pleasing my mistress. I lost sight of the bigger picture. My contentment held me over for at least ten minutes, and then I reminded myself of the journey ahead of me, but I was less jumbled in thought now, being relaxed by those prevailing nice little thoughts.

Something occurred to me. The only home I'd ever had, Retreatia…it was likely that I'd never be coming back. It had been such a nice little planet to live on. It was warm, with mild temperatures almost all year through. It had more precipitation than most areas on earth, being predominantly tropical; though we were often detained so not to be burned, it was all the better for Mistress to conduct lab experiments with water. There was an abundance of ugly little indigenous life forms—more text subjects.

It was pretty boring.

Nonetheless, my wretched, defective sentimentality got the best of me and I asked Mistress if I could go for a walk for one last good look at our home. She decided to follow, strangely. I knew she didn't care as much for the place as I did.

It was early in the evening. The sun was worming on the horizon, casting a pretty crimson sky. We walked through a thicket and got thorns stuck in our clothes and I tripped on the external root of some huge tree, landing in a pool of gelatinous sap. The walk proved to be less heart-felt than I'd fancied. I stormed back to the base, Mistress gliding along behind me. Maybe my sentiment wasn't as strong as I thought. My musings did a U-turn and I liked the idea of leaving that mean, lonely old planet.

More waiting ensued. I fidgeted a lot. Mistress scolded me (verbally) a lot. This continued for what I believe to be the longest hours in my lifetime.


There came a noise from the roof. Metallic turbulence, it sounded like. For a minute, I wondered if it was just the sounds of our house. It kept coming. They were here. They had to be.

My heart wracked in my neck and in my fingers, so hard it felt like it would rupture my skin. I looked to Mistress, who was looking right back at me without an ounce of emotion to show. "Brace yourself," is all she had to say.

We stood beside each other with some distance from the house's entrance. I watched her to see if she'd advance towards the door, each muscle in me clenched. She didn't move, but my hands were stuck as fists. Then…

The door flew open, and on its own I might add. There was no familiar landscape beyond that door, just a murky fuschia light that swallowed up everything else. I blinked. Nothing. I screwed up my eyes to see if maybe I'd missed something. No.

I didn't drop my guard, but I coyly called Mistress. "Why aren't—"

A huge racket disallowed me from finishing. The ceiling was crumbling, and where there should have been wall, there was a dark mech of a fair size standing in its place, shrouded in a contradicting, luminescent pink. Technology of this kind I'd not seen before.

And I was very, very frightened, suddenly. I had a good mind to run away, but Mistress would be upset…

It sprang at us. She didn't budge, but the impact of its dense metal legs against the ground sent me toppling over. I watched from the ground as it seized Mistress up by the midriff as easily as she sometimes did me, but with even less gentleness. A red light issued from its "face" and washed over her eyes.

"Irken General-Invader Hexa. You are under arrest. Come quietly and we won't have to initiate extreme measures." The voice was much higher than you'd expect of a fierce doombot, but lower than mine was. I gauged that it belonged to a male.

Males intimidated me. I wondered when we would run into another female.

Mistress looked so small in the constraint of the mech. I was frightened that it wouldn't relent its squeezing of her, her chest was heaving, but her expression never changed from a cold gaze.

Then I was seized up myself, upside-down and by my tail of course. My kind seemed as intrigued by my deformity as they were sickened by it. "As for the mutant," boomed the mech, before it's tone changed drastically, "…Why don't we just initiate extreme measures anyway? Rough her up a little, see what this mech can really do?" I could hear in his voice that he was roistering in his own sinister thoughts. I'd heard the same trait in Mistress.

Another voice from inside it said, "Nah. The Tallest want her in good condition for analysis. Besides, it looks like somebody beat us to the pummeling." He was referring to my bandage and puffy eye.

I'd gladly be pummeled by my skinny master over a two ton battle-mech any day. Ironically, my previous bruising was now working in my favor.

"Alrighty," he sounded a little put-out, "Geez, they didn't put up much of a fight, did they?"

"None," said the other, none too amused by his partner, "C'mon girls."

A cage on the mech's abdomen revealed itself and Mistress and I were stuffed inside. It began to trudge out of the house with the two of us in tow. The landscape passed under us at a sickening pace.

I wondered why we weren't already cruising outer space. When I tried to ask Mistress, she only shushed me and pointed to a big camera that hung from the ceiling. Then she drew in close to me and showcased a strange new mechanism on her wrist that was labeled "self-destruct". I flinched, thinking that she was in a frame of mind that would convince her to activate the device. I sighed when she diverted her attention to the view of our cage and folded her long arms behind her back.

I believe what she would have told me is that the mech was used solely for apprehending and disarming criminals. Irkens wouldn't do such things in person, it's way too risky. Instead, they control these large robots, out of the radius of the "self-destruct" thing's blast and safe from the threat of any other weapon.

In times that invoke the flow of adrenaline, these self-destruct things present themselves on Irken wrists. I don't have one, but I don't think I'd ever be compelled to use it, anyway.

The ceiling began to make buzzing sounds. Some sort of magnetic force pulled Mistress's self-destruct device away from her just as soon as she'd shown it to me, and it was lifted through a duct in the ceiling. Then, a metal arm for us each applied scraping pressure to our backs. Looking Mistress over after, I noticed a painfully conspicuous bolt jutting out from the shell of her Pak. I reached behind and below my neck and learned that I had a bolt, too. I strained in concentration to stir at least one of my bio-limbs, testing my grim suspicions.

Nothing. They were dead.

The words scrolled along in my mind as if in some sort of involuntary daydream: "PAK APPARATUS DISABLED"

I thought as much.

Our captors seemed to have little consideration as to how they were piloting the mech, it crushed a lot of things that didn't need to be. It tripped and fumbled as if in a blind stupor, and I couldn't help but think that they had had little experience with their mech. It wasn't safe to stand anymore, so Mistress and I settled on the floor, steadying ourselves by gripping the cold metal bars of our cage. Soon enough, we stopped moving in a stretch of empty sand dunes. It was quiet, until we heard a loud TWANG from above us.

We were being lifted. My heart collided with the rest of my innards, literally, like I was in the most unmerciful elevator in the universe. This went on for too long.

From the limited standpoint of our cage, we saw curved metal beams pass in and out of our blind spot. A dirty copy of the moon's image was reflecting off of the surface of a clear shaft that we were apparently now flying through.

At last, the mech broke through some sort of hatch and we found ourselves in the huge port of an even more huge ship. A physical spasm of intrigue swelled in my body and caused me to shudder. The construction of the ship was so new to me, but at the same time, so familiar; the color scheme, the level, polished surface of the beams that made up its basic framework. It was like being caged in a big, uncomfortable version of our Spittle Runner without cushy seats.

Beyond the bars of our cage and down a small flight of stairs sat a huge, thickset alien specimen on a metal bench. It sported awful arm and leg restraints. We would be joining that alien, soon, I was sure of it, and not looking forward to it either. Just to the right of him on a high, pink wall, there was a large monitor that was presently switched off.

The cage swung open, but not after we were fitted with those unpleasant restraints. They hung across our shoulders and locked our hands at a little above eye level. The ankle shackles were not so bad, but connected our feet with a short cable and would disallow us from running. I didn't, however, know where exactly we could run. It would be stupid to head out into deep space with one's Pak disabled, one would inevitably implode, but I assume that's common knowledge among humans, already.

I realized that I'd lingered in the cage too long to think, because one of those metal arms came out and zapped me with its electric prod extension. A bit disoriented, I waddled after Mistress, who I'd only just noticed was taking a seat parallel of the big, scary alien.

I warily took a seat securely very near to her, not turning my back on the alien, but never allowing myself to meet eyes with it either. It was a felon, and looked the part. I took wonder in the knowledge that I was more scared of the beast in front of me than I was scared of being persecuted by the Tallest.

A revelation: "I really must not be normal."

A shrill buzz of static announced that the monitor to our left had flickered on. The image displayed was a male Irken, his red oval eyes set high on his brow. "Greetings, outlaws," he said, "play nice with your fellow prisoner. He bites!" I recognized his voice as the one I'd heard earlier through the mech, the one that took amusement in the prospect of "roughin' me up". He continued with his gaze turning to the big alien, "Gwar!—" I didn't understand what he said next. Life was difficult without a language module. I recognized only on a few clicks and rolling R's.

"Get comfortable, it's about a week's journey to Judgementia. Don't try anything stupid."

Despite my screaming brain, I proceeded to try and get comfortable.