GalaxyDancer's "Flowers and Spikes"

Chapter 02: The Infected 'It'

Author's Comments:

You might be asking what the first chapter was all about . . . well, here's its importance, revealed by another view point. Oh, the advantages of writing in third person perspective . . .

Anyway, now we're going to get a peek at what Zim's been up to. Enjoy, and reviews would be most helpful!

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Inside a dark place, a ridiculously dark place, deep within the Earth, deep, deeper and then some, rested the most advanced technology in perhaps the universe. Most of it was capable of massive destruction, such as lasers, bombs, numerous flight crafts, and pretty much anything horrible you can think of. There were pods containing hideous experiments, screens showing countless places all over the city, spy cameras, a repair room with robotic arms cleaning up after an atomic explosion, holographic three-dimensional models of stuff floating here and there . . . it was simply amazing.

The owner of this sciencey, destructive laboratory was a person that you would never expect. The truth could shock you to the point of death. He came from the mightiest race of conquerors, who went from planet to planet seizing all that they saw . . . one filthy spinning dirt ball at a time. To any normal person who might happen to stumble upon all this weaponry and computer gizmos and such, they would imagine the owner to be an evil genius scientist bent on world conquest with an I.Q. of at least three hundred. They would be correct about half of that information, but as for Zim being smart . . . let's just say he falls into the "idiotic dribbling moron" category. Or somewhere not too far from it.

More or less a stupid genius. In other words, he had unfathomably amazing scientific marvels, but his ideas of how to use them were those of four-year-olds. It'd be like sitting your pet poodle in a giant robot and telling it to push buttons aimlessly. Ahem . . . smart poodle, if you will. Anyway, back to our story, because any Zim fan reading this gets the point already.

An angered voice cried out from deep in the laboratory, in a room situated for creating evil plans, ". . . GIR! Get in here NOW!"
And the response came from a little annoying android with a squeaky voice who happened to be sitting on the sofa on the upper level of the house watching the game out the window. "I WANNA MAKE BACON!" Then Gir ran to the trashcan in the kitchen and hopped inside, falling to the lab below and sliding out. He skidded to a stop right in front of his master's feet. Looking up at him, he added quietly and eerily, "Me and bacon are friends."

Zim raised an eyebrow, a little confused by this statement, like all the others that came from the mouth of the insane little robot. Then, getting back to the reason why he had called for Gir in the first place, he asked, "Gir, what did you do to the lawn gnomes? Their video function isn't working properly. Without us monitoring what's going on outside, any of the hideous humans could just walk up to our door and try to . . . I dunno, sell cookies?"

"COOKIES!" screamed Gir excitedly, jumping up and grabbing Zim's face with his hands and feet. "Let's bake cookies and send them to Dib!"

"Gah! Get off my head!" cried Zim, prying Gir off of him and tossing him across the room, causing him to crash into the wall and then slide down to end up head first on top of the computer console.

Brushing himself off, Zim continued, "No cookies, Gir! We have to find out what's interfering with the gnomes and destroy it! Do you understand? We're NOT baking cookies! Never! Ever!"

Gir looked a little disappointed while still upside down. "Aw, man! What about waffles?"

Suddenly a wave of nausea overtook Zim at the mere mention of the word, and he slapped his hand over his mouth as he tried not to vomit. After not too long, he drew in a deep breath and answered quietly, "No, Gir. No . . . waffles. Never again."

A smile slowly spread across Gir's face as he remembered what had happened with the last waffle incident. "Oh yeah! . . . Last time you ate waffles, you-"

"Emergency!" cried the computer, alarms suddenly sounding. "Security breach! An intruder is present."

Slightly panicked, Zim said in a combat voice, "Computer! What is the threat? Who dares interrupt our waffle argument!"

The computer showed him a view screen of the front lawn, which revealed one child crouching down behind one of Zim's gnomes and giggling. Another child ran passed the camera in a blur. Zim didn't quite understand this, it mostly just annoyed him. He continued to watch as the screen changed the view, zooming out to show mostly all of the cul-de-sac. And it was then that Zim's eyes widened at the awkward sight of kids everywhere, all running from one particular individual who was chasing them.

"Wha . . . what's happening?" asked Zim, confused, shocked, and overall frightened. He watched as the one child touched another as they ran by, calling "You're it!" then running away as the new "it" started chasing everybody like the last. It was as if the "it" was infected with some sort of horrible disease that spread from person to person by physical contact. Zim had heard of such things, but never witnessed them before.

Gir was having fun watching the live video feed. "Woo! Lookit 'em go!"

Zim gulped. "Something must be done about this . . . Before the humans find out about our secret base!"