Veira: Short thing I've been putting together. I liked it, so it'll go up here. IZ is Jhonen's.
Deal
Black. A stark coldness in her limbs, numb and prickled like countless needles in her skin. She struggled to open her eyes. Nothing. Her vision spun and she shut them again, a moment before her stomach stopped spinning as well, and she let out a breath, thick liquid expelled out of her lungs.
She waited. The machinery kicked in with a metallic thump. The suspension liquid shifted, eddies rippling by her antennae as the feeling started to seep back into them. She flexed her fingers, toes. A smile was at her lips, and she stretched. It was getting warmer. She could feel the heat seeping into her extremities, warming them up. Bubbles shuttered across her skin, and she tried her eyes again. Black again, but now a purple so dark it mixed in flawlessly. Blue crept into it, the arc of the glass and a sheen of light far off.
After a moment, the fog across her eyes seemed to evaporate, and she saw the two flawless, cruel grins behind the glass. Four eyes, purple and red.
Whoosh and the lights blinded her, the bottom of the suspension chamber gave out and she was flushed onto the ground. Bare, tender knees and hands struck the super-steel of the floor. Pain spiked up through them and she collapsed onto the floor, face down in the thick liquid that had sloshed out of the tube with her. She coughed, wheezed around the fluid in her lungs before her body was wracked with a painful spell of coughing again. It was freezing, and the liquid was evaporating off her body faster than it should have. She gasped in the fumes of it, antennae now limp at the sides of her head, dripping into her eyes as she squinted at the floor before her.
Their voices echoed at the edge of her hearing, double-fingered hands gripping at her arms and lifting her away, out of the room, knots of black tubing the last thing she saw before the door closed.
---
"So, how is she?" Red's voice met her antennae with a flick, and she glanced up from her holobook datafeed to the door in one smooth glint of her eye. They were both there, and her hand tightened around the data-rod of the book as she squinted through the letters at the metal examination table. As the Tallest made their way across the spotty medical station, a short female Irken came back over to Tak, her pak resting placidly in the nurse's arms. Big violet eyes blinked as she cleared the approaching fog of death from her vision. She dropped the book, snatched her pak and awkwardly put it back on. She wanted to be at top strength to talk to the Tallest. A glare sent the smaller Irken away without a word as Tak eyed the shimmering plasma barrier, the two leaders approaching through its deep orange field.
Red came around the barrier first, only waiting a second before Purple was next to him. Neither of them spoke for a moment, and she glared them down as she waited. No trust here. She wasn't even supposed to be here. She was still supposed to be on Dirt. If they wanted to send her back there, they would pay.
"So... Tak." Purple's voice broke the silence.
"What?" she snapped, an angry flick of her antennae as she ran a hand over the ugly red of a standard Irken uniform.
Not giving her a chance to say more, Red waved a hand and cables snaked out of the walls, binding themselves around her wrists and ankles. She seethed at the two Tallest as she fought the restraints. It only added to insult that Purple was eating. She would cut holes in them when she could.
"You're defective." Red told her, gliding forward to look her in the face. He hesitated, left a space for her to respond, but she remained silent, just watching him and his companion. "You left your station on Dirt even though it was your position. And then you went to Earth, of all places, to try and get rid of Zim."
Crimson stared at her for a while, she glared back. Defective? They were the ones who couldn't see here.
"So how come you didn't?" Purple piped up, sipping at a slushie.
She blinked. "What?"
"You were so close to taking Zim out. What happened?" he went on. Red waved a hand again and the restraints relaxed before pulling back into the wall.
Tak blinked again, staring at them in disbelief. That was it? They were almost acting friendly now. "Um... Well, we were engaged in a dogfight, and by some freak accident, he was able to corrupt my SIR unit, and I was flung into the depths of space."
Purple, who had been giggling at her shock a moment before, sobered at this. "How is it right that he has that sort of luck?"
"Shut up," Red said, shoving the other Tallest out of the way before turning back to her. "Tak, we have an offer for you. We'll employ you as a bounty hunter for as long as you want, if you can make sure Zim stops calling us." Both of them looked sickened at that thought, and the pleading in their eyes made her grin.
"But I thought I was defective. What about that?"
Purple, who had recovered by now, answered that. "Ah, we'll just, um, make it go away."
Red shot him a look. "We'll delete it from the watch list," he corrected. "Whatever you need, just tell us. You're new ship is waiting in the docking bay, and your SIR unit is being updated at the moment."
She grinned as they left the infirmary.
---
She tried out the new controls on the ship. Everything had been updated to state of the art equipment, and she let her fingers linger over everything as she thought about what was to come. The ship had been stocked with what supplies she'd need. Mimi was about to get back from her updating, and for the past half hour, Tak had been scanning the new data she had absorbed since she had been unfrozen.
The only thing that annoyed her was the delay. They had briefed her on a number of rouge aliens the Irken Empire needed taken out or captured. Zim somehow came in last. But she would get her revenge. And anyway, they had promised her full access after his capture, to do whatever she wanted to him. The grin couldn't seem to slide from her face.