GalaxyDancer's "Flowers and Spikes"

Chapter 05: We're Off To See The Wizzard!

Author's Comments:

Boy, Dib was of little help. Anyway, Zim's kind of planning a little something for Lin . . . he's not sure what, yet, though. He just knows he's planning something. Of course, at this very moment, he's taking a break, having been at it all night. As for Lin . . . well, she really just wants to see her Zimmy again.

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Twenty-four hours had passed since we began this story. Yes, everybody, I am generally saying that it is now yet another beautiful morning, today's belonging to Sunday, also one of two cherished weekend days, sadly the second.

There was no noise anywhere. It seemed time had come to a complete halt as suspense hung in the air, each second bringing new tension and fear.

And a little girl skipped happily down the street with a flower in hand. She was as happy as anybody could be, her young heart filled to bursting with the love she felt for a special someone. Childhood memories she was creating, but for the one she had her eyes on, "childhood" was merely the part of his life which he spent underground in the horrible learning facilities to train for his future life as an invader, and that piece of his history was long over for him.

She had no idea of how little they had in common, nor how much he despised her, despite only meeting her yesterday. All she knew was that she loved him from the very start; she hardly knew why. She was blind to the fact that, even after living at least five times longer than the life-span of a human, Zim had never "loved" anything. In fact, he hated everything to an extent that was virtually unreachable for humans. It is only fair to say that anybody watching our blossoming little couple would feel sorry for the child.

Zim was in the "kitchen", if you can even call it that, sitting down at the table. He was in his human disguise because he had one of the windows open due to it being a lovely sunny morning. His attention was focused on looking over a few papers he had received in a transmission from the Almighty Tallest. They were assignments he was to complete, but some of them were baffling to him.

"Hmm . . . what do you suppose they mean by 'explosion of your choice'?" Zim blinked and gave the papers a confused look. "'Explosion'. . ."

Suddenly the doorbell rang, an awkward tone to an Irken, but Zim had adjusted to it and now recognized it as the humans' way of letting him know one of them was at the doorstep of his fortress and wished to tell him something.

Zim got up, papers still in hand, only half concentrating on what he was doing, and automatically went to answer the door. He opened it without even once looking to see who it was, and asked while still staring at his assignments, "Yeah, what do you want?"

Lin smiled and her eyes seemed to glow. She snatched the papers right out of Zim's grasp with the same hand she had the flower in, and pulled from behind her a pair of scissors with her free hand.

Zim gasped. "You! What do you think you're doing? Give those back; they're top secret!"

Lin only giggled. In the blink of an eye she cut out a chain of heart shapes out of the papers, each linked together to the next by the side of the top. She opened the folded paper to reveal it was a pattern, which consisted of the hearts running in three rows: one right-side-up, one upside-down, and the last right-side-up again.

Zim's mouth was hanging open. It was clear this "Lin" had to be destroyed.

"DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU'VE JUST DONE?" screamed Zim. "DO YOU? HUH? HUH? HUH? HUH?"

Lin giggled. "I made them for you," she said dreamily, handing him the cut-up papers.

Zim looked horrified as his eyes scrolled over the hearts that used to be a message from his leaders. Never in his life had he met such a horrible creature as Lin! But before he could say one word about how much he hated her, she grabbed his arm with her left hand and started skipping along, her right arm swinging back and forth with the flower. He dropped the paper hearts, forgetting about them and concentrating more on pulling away from the horrible Lin girl.

As she dragged him with her away from the safety of his fortress, someone picked up what he had left behind, and smiled.