Author's Notes: Okay, first of all, the staff that the guard is wielding here, that was not some cheap throw-in because he needed a weapon. To me, he was always holding it, I just never found a convenient place to mention it. But in the show, all the guards have those staff things, right? To hit and tazer people? Well, it's always been there. Seriously, I have drawings of him from three months ago holding that staff. I'm not just lazy.

The only thing I own is gross flavors of potato chips.

:huggles Wrath of Raksheen and Zim's Fan:

Fer ran.

His guard ran alongside him. Of course, that other machine in his room- it had been another security measure. As soon as he put a foot out the window, charged cords shot out to restrain him. Fer was lucky that while the room had been designed to hold an Irken prisoner, that machine had not been reformatted specifically for him; the cords that shot out were meant for latching on to his Pak, and could not do so as he hung from the remains of the bars over his window. But the computer, trying to solve the problem, marked it off as an error and went for the only thing with a Pak in the room- Fer's guard. He decided against lying about the escaped prisoner, and instead leapt out of the room, grabbing Fer in one arm as he dropped out the window and sending his spider legs out as they fell, down, down, the legs catching them with a jerk leaving that left the two a little too close to the concrete.

Fer ran.

The machine also sent out a signal to other guards in the vicinity- and it hadn't been long before they were being chased by what seemed like every guard in the immediate area. For a while they managed to keep a good distance between themselves and their hunters, scuttling along quickly toward the factories while Fer hugged his guard to secure himself from dropping. But the higher-up guards had lasers equipped with their tazer-staffs, and one good shot was all it took to break one of the metal legs in half and send the pair crashing to the ground. Looking back Fer realised that he might have been able to reconnect the leg, if they had only three minutes or so, but they really did not have any time at all. Fer had scarcely helped push his guard up and standing before they both took off again on foot, not even pausing to make sure they weren't hurt.

Fer realised running the whole way to the forest may not be an option; they had not even left the parameters and he was already tiring. Mechanics did not need physical training, and sitting around in a room for the past month did not help things. His feet were sore, and Fer was beginning to wish he had taken Nyon's boots when he offered them. And the rest of his outfit was not helping, either: Scraps of cloth tied together was not an ideal running uniform.

There were a couple flashes as lasers fired, missing on both sides, but just barely. There was a distinct pounding of feet behind them, and both Fer and his guard turned to see that one of their subjugators had now run faster than the group and was almost on top of them. Fer looked ahead. The factories were still too far away.

"Keep going!" Fer's guard yelled, stopping and turning around, holding out his tazer staff in a defensive manner. Fer panicked, and stopped just after him. "What do you mean! Don't be retarded! We have to keep going! They'll kill you!"

"I can fight him, don't worry. And I'll just slow them down a bit. Go get Stek and Nyon and just get to the forest!"

Fer began jogging backwards, afraid that if he stopped moving for too long he wouldn't be able to keep himself going.

"Tell me your name!" Fer shouted louder this time, since the other guard that had been closing in on them had brought his staff down on Fer's guard. He managed to block with his own staff, and they were now fighting.

Fer's guard made a noise, like he was about to shout his reply, but as he did he ducked under the offending guard's staff, who twisted it around and stabbed straight through Fer's guard, just under the Pak. There was a horrible moment when Fer stood, now still with shock, with his eyes frozen on his guard's wide-eyed, paling face, a trickle of yellow-green blood beginning to drip from his lip; then a worse moment when the offending guard flipped on the tazer, and Fer's guard was spasaming as he filled with electricity, his form clothed in a blue-white glow. Then there was the sickening sound as his body slipped off of the staff as the offending guard pulled it up, and the body dropped to the ground, making a horrible thudding sound and allowing a small puddle of blood to collect beneath it.

Fer watched, a couple meters away, with pure horror, trying to come up with a logical sign that his guard had lived through that. But as the guard Fer's own had been battling bent over to check his vital signs, and the rest of the group that had been chasing them closed in, Fer turned around and ran without another thought, forcing everything out besides Stek and Nyon, Stek and Nyon..

His feet were moving faster, and he somehow managed to make it to the factory in under a minute since the horrific sight he witnessed, ignoring every pain and exhaustion he felt until he burst in through the large doors. He skidded across the floor amid gaps and shouts, jumped over some equipment, and spotted Stek and Nyon in a corner, where they had been trying to talk in secret before Fer burst in.

"We're going!" Fer panted, and Stek and Nyon looked at him with surprise.

"Going?" Nyon repeated blankly, trying to grasp the situation.

"Yes, we're leaving this place! There's a forest on Irk and we're going there!"

Stek stood up and began to move forward. "Where's a forest on Irk? Are you in trouble?"

The question had hardly dropped from her lips when the pack of guards burst in, and Fer cursed, gestured to Stek and Nyon, and began running again. The two instantly went after him, eight mechanical legs clattering as they rushed after through the opposite set of doors.

Fer saw the faint glow of the electric fence, but he suddenly realised he had no idea how long it would take to short out parts of the fence without his Pak; he was also becoming increasingly worried of being obvious about where he was intending to go.

He looked back. Nyon and Stek were just behind him, and just behind them, his captors. Nyon reached out a gloved hand, but he was too far away and Fer would not stop running. When he turned back around, he saw another group of guards were coming from in front, and Fer cursed and dodged between two buildings.

Sprinting down sidewalks, Fer felt a new burst of energy. While a part of him felt bad for dragging Stek and Nyon in to this, he was encouraged by their presence. If he could find an opening to get to a fence post, one of them could break in and let all three out to the forest, but they would need to also lose the guards so they wouldn't figure out where they were going. It would probably be safer to hide out in some abandoned buildings instead of going straight there, though it would take longer to finally get away..

As they ran past factories, quarters and eventually made it to a section of tall buildings run by personnel, Fer, lost in thought and exhaustion, barely recognized the new batch of guards coming at them to cut them off. Swerving to the side, Fer made a snap decision and ran in to a building.

It was a building with a low security, and an elevator, two things Fer was grateful for as many red eyes looked at him with confusion. Making up a half-baked idea that he could somehow get to the roof and then sneak down the other side of the building, Fer threw himself inside. He randomly punched buttons until the doors closed, armed guards visible through the crack running towards him as he sat down on the floor, panting.

Fer looked up. Twenty-six floors. He had twenty-six minutes to think of a plan. Fer reached up, though he would have preferred passing out and sleeping for a long, long time, and hit the top button, then balled up on the floor. His head was spinning, he could feel it pounding almost as much as he could feel his squigglyspooch pounding... all the blood in him was rushing around so fast he though he would explode...

Fer put a balled fist to his forehead, tears at his eyes. Of course, there was no way his guard had lived through that... there was no way...

There was a sudden thudding, and Fer crawled over and looked out over the edge of the floor. The wall with the door and buttons was regular and flat, but the rest was circular and viewed outside of the building. It was protected with a strong form of nearly-invisible plastic, and charged with the same technology that protected most public entryways and was used in the electric fences. It made the open side of the elevator impenetrable.

Below, a large gathering of guards were firing lasers at the elevator. Fer knew that he wasn't a high priority, but any break in Irken security was an important issue to be dealt with. He spotted Nyon and Stek in the crowd, looking up at him with anxiousness. He looked back at the screen. There was a red number nine looking back at him.

There was a sudden jerk, and Fer was thrown back against the wall. The elevator was now making a horrible grinding noise as it rose, moving slower and slower. Fer realised they were shooting at the exposed track, and with another lurch that caused Fer to slide in to a corner, that it was going to fall.

Fer panicked. He wasn't prepared to die like this. He tried to stand, but his legs merely turned to jello, so he crawled over to the wall, pulling back the control panel and diving into the wires. He didn't bother looking for the right ones, but merely ripped at anything he could get his hands on. The screen flickered off at the twelve floor. The lights in the elevator went out next. Then, as Fer tugged out a fistful of thick cords, the electricity in the plastic panel shorted out. The plastic, not used to the sudden lack of charge, bent and cracked. Fer forced himself standing as a couple laser shots easily snapped through the weakened material, and Fer took a breath, and charged.

There was a shattering of plastic, and Fer, a mere bundle of red cloth, dropped amongst the light of red lasers. He didn't think about landing, he didn't even dream of being able to get away when he stopped falling... Dream...

A little blue hat floated off of Fer's head as he landed in a blackness that he sure hadn't been on the ground before...

Nyon fingered the lining of one of the patches that made up the blue hat. Leaning against the side of such an expansive, seemingly endless building made Nyon feel small and uncomfortable. He would occasionally glance toward the walkway, to see if Stek had exited yet. He would have waited by the doors, but he had been ordered to go straight to his quarters, and he had to sneak to remain here as it was.

Feeling a bit foolish, Nyon first brought the hat closer, then wrapped his arms around it as he leaned his face on the warm cloth. There was something there... something familiar.. Fer's scent. Fer had an individual scent. Nyon never noticed this sort of thing before.

Nyon trembled. Fer... where was he? Stek had caught Fer as he fell from fourteen stories up, when Nyon was too terrified to work up the strength to shove his way past the guards. It had been better that she caught him, anyway- she had been closer to the front, and made up some lie about accidentally being shoved in the way by a guard. Both Stek and Nyon had to do a lot of lying- They had chased after Fer thinking they could help capture the subverted one, Nyon had reached out his hand trying to grab him...

How did things end up like this? Nyon was brought in front of the Control Brain, only to have to lie. Both he and Stek knew that there was a place Fer thought they could hide, but they would not be able to help him get there if they were imprisoned, too.

But where was Fer? Where had they taken him? What were they going to do with him?

How had things ended up like this?

Nyon whimpered and hugged the hat tighter. This was an impossible situation. Would Fer be mad at them for lying? For not standing up and facing their opponents as he had? For attempting to melt back in as puppets...

He wiped some of the liquid away from his eyes. Did that mean... the thoughts he had been having were not puppet thoughts?

Looking up over the edge of blue cloth, Nyon spotted Stek walking slowly back toward their section of the property. Nyon immediately jumped to his feet and ran after her.

"Stek! Did they believe you? Did you find out anything about Fer?"

She shook her head. "He's been in critical care for a while. Yesterday must have taken a lot out of him. He's scheduled to be brought before the control brain sometime in the next few days, they won't say when."

"Ok..." Nyon said, taking a step back from her.

"We'd better get going. We might have to start working again right away."

"Yeah. You're right." Nyon had almost forgotten about his duties as a mechanic. But did it really matter? Did he even make a difference?

'Fer, could you tell me? If these are puppet thoughts or...'

Nyon looked at the building behind him with discontent and worry. Fer had better come out of there soon...

Fer felt the restraints before he opened his eyes. When he did open them, he saw a guard looking over him with coldness. Indifference.

Fer turned his head in the other direction, hardly able to stare at the uniform. Would they answer if he asked if his guard had survived?

The guard by his bed made a signal, and the computer on the opposite side of the room sent out some cords.

Recognizing that they were for him, Fer sighed. He would have obediently sat up if not for the straps over his shoulders. The guard flipped a switch, and the straps retracted, and the cords immediately had Fer in a tight grip. A chute opened in the wall, and Fer was released into it, bumping down the tube until he landed on the platform in front of the Control Brain, and the Tallests on either side.

Fer looked up at it, his whole body sore and his head empty of any care. It seemed fairly futile now, resisting. Did he really think he could hide in a forest? They would always find you. The grip of the Irken empire... they ruled. Did Fer really think he could escape, so outmatched as he was?

"Mechanic Fer!" The brain seemed angry now. Annoyed he had to waste so much time on this.

"Mechanic Fer, you are responsible for destroying an elevator in sector eleven and corrupting a guard of the Irken Empire. You are also charged with trying to escape from your containment though you did not comply with the terms to which you were sentenced, and fleeing from Irken officers. Is this clear?" Red poked the screen from which he was reading off Fer's offenses, and it faded away.

"Meh," was Fer's feeble reply, thumbing the lining of his clothing. So he had been squeezed in to a new uniform. He stripped off a glove, wiggling his fingers. This was an improvement.

Purple was now watching a security video, showing Fer falling from the elevator before the camera dropped along with the elevator. "This is some good footage though. It only would have been better if you went splat at the bottom. Saved us some problems too. See! There?"

Through the shaking and static of the falling camera, Fer could see the small shape that was him crash in to the small shape that, after a moment of squinting, he could see was Stek. Fer might be the only one that could tell that even if she was shoved, she was intending to catch him. Her arms reached out, and Fer, unconscious, fell on top of her and knocked her back. She didn't seem to mind. The camera, which had been dropping too was close enough now to see her relieved face as she wrapped her arms around Fer's sleeping form, before guards ran towards her. But then the elevator had hit the ground, and with a loud sound of crunching metal the video disappeared into snow.

Fer wondered what happened to her. At least he understood why he wasn't dead.

"Enough of this foolishness," The Control Brain commanded. "Mechanic Fer, you are hereby ordered to replace your Pak!"

The cords that shot out of the wall wrapped around Fer's wrists and neck, holding him tight as more cords came out, holding a Pak between them. The cords that came out of the Pak wiggled towards Fer's back. There was a moment of silence where nothing happened.

The Control Brain's computer was emitting a furious static, and the Tallests cried out in surprise, but Fer's apathetic mood only allowed him to feel a little more relief. Fer estimated he had gone over a month without a Pak, and the holes in his back had healed over. Trying to cut more in a grown Irken and installing a Pak would kill him. Fer smiled. He was feeling more relieved by the second. The Pak... he was free from it forever.

"If you can't wear the Pak, you will be terminated," The Control Brain ordered. "Your execution will take place as soon as possible! We're done with trying to deal with you."

Fer's smile didn't fade. He was free... soon he would really be free. No Paks and no brainwashed empire of doom... it really did sound like a nice vacation.

Poop: Another thing- I know Irkens are allergic to water and crying should be physically painful, but when you think about it, they're aliens. For all we know they're weeping liquid mercury. It doesn't have to be water like on earth.

Anyway. Whoo! Chase scenes! This chapter was kinda long for me.

Sorry if this chapter doesn't flow well. I was sick writing the first half, and I had a lot of problems with the dialogue. I hope it doesn't seem too forced.