StarSeal: Squee for new chapter-ness! Thanks for all your nice comments and stoof, It makes me write faster. And no, I refuse to put Dib in this! Unless I go nuts and just cram everyone into a Neo vr. Smith Minions style battle at the end... But I'm too tired to add more characters. So, sorry to crush your dreams. I'm glad you like it anyway, though. Because it seems like the whole time they;ve just stood around talking. M'yep...

Oh, and InvaderAngel gets the Special Invader Award for guessing who the I Feel Sick representitive is! Everyone else thought it was Spooky. I love Spooky, but he didn't seem... Very... alive. Yess, so very squeekily not-alive.

Jhonen walked calmly back into his house after the cramped voot cruiser left. He ordered the hologram to return and picked up his controller, restarting the level of Halo II. "Silly characters," he murmured. "Thinking they can defeat me, me, the Almighty Jhonen." He picked up a Brain Freezy and sipped it contentedly, thinking of his countless fan sites. This made him think of all those horribly twisted fanauthors, the ones who are always filling their stories with icky, sexual content. You know who you are. Zim is not a love-pig, dammit!

As he slowly cleared the level, destroying stuff and picking up, um, ammo, and stuff (am I a Halo expert or what?) he got bored and decided that he might as well return to earth. He gave the order and teleported into his fortress of doom, which remained in the center of his collapsed empire of s---. Boopy and all the other beasts looked up. He wondered why they hadn't asked for more comics. But of course, they'd never had plots to begin with, so they wouldn't need endings. A pig flew by.

Jhonen sat down in his horrible couch, which still smelled of him regardless of what he told Roman, and began nodding off. He thought of how amazingly clever he was, that all his little footnotes the poor, doomed readers overlooked where in fact keys to his unending rule, and wondered what pathetic ideas his lunatic creations were scheming up. Knowing them, they'd come back with mountains of super weapons and put someone like Noodle Boy or Gir in charge.

"Let them come," he told zim-eye-pink walls around him. "I can take anything they throw at me."

"You can tell yourself that, Jhonen, but that won't make it true."

"What? Who the hell said that?"

There was no answer. Jhonen scowled and went into the kitchen. "Stupid voices," he grumbled.

"That's not very nice."

"Okay, who's there?"

"Don't you know me?"

"How the hell would I know that if I don't know who I'm talking to?"

"Ooh, do you want to? Then you'll just have to follow the sound of- oh, dammit…"

There came a tinkle of falling metal and a silver screw rolled across the floor to rest at Jhonen's feet. He lifted it, realizing the connection. "Oh, Sickness! I wondered why Devi wasn't harassing me."

A little doll hopped clumsily out from under the stove. "Yes. Yes, it's me. Now would you mind giving me back my damn eye?"

Jhonen held it out. Sickness felt around the air for a few seconds before touching it. She shoved the screw moodily into her haunted, empty socket and glared at Jhonen. "Thanks," she said, bitterly.

"So," said Jhonen, boredly, "Are you going to tell me why you're here? Do you want a comic too, cause, y'know, it's getting old."

"No, I don't want a comic! If I did I would have told you with the others. No, I'm not mad at you. Why would I be?"

"Because I gave you thirty seven panels outside that painting before I let Devi pin you that canvas with a paintbrush?"

The lid under Sickness' screw twitched. "Yess, I admit that did tick me off a bit, but what the hell? I got an ending. I got a plot. I even got color! What more would I want? I am, after all, the only thing you gave an entire story to."

"What about IT?"

"I'vn't read that either!" Sickness snapped. "Heh? Oh, right- why I'm here. Yess, I'm here because I don't think that killing you is worth a few comics. See, that's all they want. Soo… will you give them comics?"

"What? And submit to the things that wouldn't exist without me? No way!"

"Okay, yeah, I didn't think so.

"And how do you plan to help me?"

"Hmm. Well, considering you're not going to make more comics, I guess all I can do is tell you what they're doing to fight you."

"And how do you know what they're planning?" Jhonen challenged.

Sickness smirked. She tapped her empty right socket. "I put a screw in Gir's head," she said. "Poor fool never noticed."

"Yess, of course you did. See, I knew that you would benefit from having your eyes ripped out. As I've mentionedduring Frycook, I have no flaws."

"What about the Foodening not coming across clearly?"

"Oh, shut up! You sound like an obsessive fan, quoting all my lines from the commentary… the couch smell… peanut choking… Don't shush me!"

"That was Richard. In Nightmare."

"Grr! Just stop talking."

"No, we have things to discuss."

"Ah, so you do want a comic."

"Me? No. I've come to help you. You need to see why everyone's doing this, and how to stop it. You have this really annoying habit of depriving life from your characters. Zim, Nny, Todd, they all had beginnings, and middle, but no end. Noodle boy didn't need either, I suppose, but could have more fun. But the point is, you gave everyone such wonderfully tortured lives! Especially in Invader Zim. But then you just deserted us! And for what! HALO? And Minimoose- He didn't even have a beginning!"

"But you're on my side?"

Of course I am! I don't' hate you like the others, No, I'm very fortunate; I have a beginning, middle, and an end in my story, which is better than the others can boast."

"Hmm. Well, I suppose it'll be nice to have one of you creepy things with me, considering I created you…"

"Precisely. But you need to think about what you're going to do. You know Zim; he never doesn't have an evil plan. And he's got his entire world on his side, remember. Nny, with endless knives, and the help of the Moose and Reverend Meat. All your characters, dumb as they are, have a vast world of schemes. Schemes that YOU gave them. They'll find a way to defeat you."

Jhonen lifted the doll and they stared at each other. He noticed that Sickness' screw were still loose; Devi'd ripped it out really hard. It never occured to Jhonen that he was kind of a jerk to his characters. "But tell me, Sickness, as you said- I gave you so few panels of freedom, which ended miserably. What do you have to gain from helping me?"

Sickness laughed. The screw fell out. "Damn. Anyway, it's not just for you. Think about what would happen if you got killed."

"Wouldn't you all die with me?"

"No! And that's just it! Even if we're just in your head, on your napkins, our adventures are much sweeter then than in the head of the fanficcers. Do you have any idea what those insatiable writers would so? They'd have a field day! Fear of you is all that's keeping half of those sick freaks from twisting us into unrecognizable beasts! I don't want that, and I'm sure that, beneath your revolting, meaty shell, you don't either. And beneath that you just want a slushy. I like slushies. Eh? Oh, right. The plan. Well, before you'd interrupted me-"

"How could I interrupt you when you approached me?"

"-I had been listening to the Rebellion. And they've had some very interesting points."

"Like what?"

"Did you know that the platypus lactates through pores in its belly and, in doing so, feeds its lapping, new-hatched young?"

"Um… I could have gonewithout knowing that."

"It's true. I think Filler pointed that out. Yeah, but apart from that it's mainly just screamy arguing. And Keef exploding. Is that like, his hobby or something? But yeah, they don't have a plan yet but they will. I know they will. They shall scream and fight and explode and snack, but they will get a plan. And, being made from your mind, they will think like you do- find a weakness and use it to their advantage."

"Okay, so we're doomed. Now I was going to ask you how you expect to help me, but first I want to know how you hear through your eye."

Sickness drew breath to answer, and decided it wouldn't be worth it, and closed her mouth again.

StarSeal: Ugh, more standing aroung talking. At least we see lots of Sickness, tho. I love Sickness. She has screws for eyes, she's related to Nny's 'Moose', she has really neat-o legs and she got nailed to her frame with a paintbrush. What's not to like? And yes, platypi really do feed their young that way. Don't ask how Filler knows. But It's true. Heh, platypi. Yes, I did make that up. It's my fanfic, my HORRIBLE fanfic, so shut up.