A/N: Psst- this is longer than the last bad-boy at over 7,000 words. I should've been doing my schoolwork over the time between updates, but I wrote this in between when nobody was looking to meet my imposed deadline –shhhhhh- don't tell my mooooom or my teachers okay i'll get in trouble thanks bye
ps: this chapter was a bitch and a half to boot so I'm sorry it took so long but it was really hard so do please forgive me
Laughter tore over the trio all the way to the floor. There was a flexing of the beast's tail and suddenly they were all slammed directly into the ground – left to rebound away from one another in reeling chaos.
Zim grunted as the earth thumped and rotated around him. Flecks of filth got caught in his mouth, much to his ire, but as his intact antenna's end slipped over the ground it detected another crash. Trembles followed, reporting rapid stomping whenever it brushed below. The impacts were headed his way...
Mid-roll, his spider-legs emerged and vaulted right out the path of the on-coming charge. The black streak in question skidded through the soil several feet away with a low chuckle, despite having just missed its matador. Their red gazes locked a moment as Zim stabilized – here, he noted how the shadows curled around it like flames, decreasing in intensity whilst it slowed along its route. With its smile unhindered, the eyes of the monster glinted. With each limb slashing at the ground, it resumed the charge to Zim's position with an additional, fear-inducing howl.
Refusing to skip a beat, the Invader too charged forward, and sprung over its gnashing teeth this time.
Legs stretched in the air – bound in a slow-motion movement with an expansive monster below – he finally took a breath.
He used this span of 2.56 seconds to scan the vicinity. A ways away lay GIR – the fall hadn't boded well on him, it seemed – his programming possibly made it instinctual to take the brunt of their fall (so he supposed – his minion was behaving oddly. Perhaps the Gaz had tampered with him? Questioning would have to wait). Either way, he seemed to be struggling to realign his circuitry. Not too far away was a trembling Gaz, wrestling to get up, bat in hand. Beneath his own soles was a long, dark body speeding past. And to the far, far wall – all the way across the other room, across the massive circle shrouded in tendrils – was the coat with all his weapons kept within.
The scourge of Irk narrowed his eyes.
He needed a pla
Smoke abruptly rolled past his toes and shrouded his form. He gasped, unable to see anything – not his flailing arms, or his uniform, or his assailant – just a swallowing blackness. There was a sound right above him accompanied by a triumphant, otherworldly screech of pleasure and reconstructing bones.
"PREDICTABLE TERMITE!" a familiar tail constricted Zim's body in a sudden choke-hold, "GOTCHA!"
Cardiac functions skipped their rhythm- "ARGH-!"
Whipped through the smoke, he screamed. Motion swerved over his whole body, and once more the ex-elite found himself just about to get suplexed right into the dirt with great force. With a series of thoughts, blue light from his PAK shields quickly encased him and seared right through the spinal extension that'd once bound him. Bits of… Bone? Rotated about in the air with him as his fall slowed, and the skeletal coil unravelled from his torso. The middle of its tail burnt at the bottom of his bubble.
Everything decelerated a moment.
In response, the creature roared in fury and swiped the electric bubble with a closed fist, breaking it without care of the burn it left in its flesh. This sent the pee-wee destroyer tumbling across the arena in Gaz's direction with a new bruise on his already scabbed belly.
Once his legs had concluded chaotically sprawling all over the place around his form, his body picked proper a position to be humiliated with. Skidding on his face, the green menace stopped right at her crouched side. His feet were the last to impact the ground, which they did lifelessly. …No, comically. That was a better term. Comically…
Groaning, Zim looked over his shoulder to view the spotted trail of his own skin, fabric and hemolymph stretching after him. The front half of his uniform had been completely torn off, exposing his battered, peeled-up torso in all its newly and utterly filthy glory. His face wasn't faring much better... How annoying. Even the stupid girl human was faring better than he was…
In delirium, the ragged pair stared passively at each other a moment. Spitting some of the blood off her lip, Gaz spoke first.
"You look like crap," she said, coming to stand.
Zim ignored the sticky fluids beading and rolling from the gashes along his face, arms, and upper body as he rose to his elbows. He, too, spat, though his had more soil in it. "My injuries… A-Aren't as superfluous as yours," he mocked, the back of his uniform hanging over his scrawny form like a ragtag cape, "Do not insult Zim when your physical state is less-"
"Alright, that's enough. We need better games."
They turned around to the monster, lingering meters away. It's leer was callous and mildly entertained, viewing them like insects it intended to pluck apart segment by segment.
"We'll work our way up," it deliberated, "All gradual-like..."
This said, the thing raised its big, sharp claws to the base of its ribs and ploughed right in. From there, it proceeded to rake right on through the tissue. The matter squelched in protest, but apart the talons slit, leaving a deep crevice in wake. There was nothing resembling blood, but light seemed to waft out the wound, from higher up inside the ribs – a very gentle iridescence, but even from a distance they could sense that it was too different to be compared to the light from flash grenades. Milder. Livelier… A hand dug inside, and desecrated it as though it were a meal. The iridescent glow almost wriggled in protest, but it started to spool its hand, and the hand left with a grip full of multi-coloured light - parted from the main source. Once this was completed, the wound sealed shut behind, leaving no trace it'd existed.
Snarling, the light was whipped right into the air, where it spread apart into individual, rounded colours.
Sixty-six balls of light, his PAK relayed. They scattered and crashed around the whole floor in various positions like raindrops, searing dull alchemic circles into the ground and walls in wake.
The stampeding headed their way shut their awe right off. Quickly, Gaz cursed and yanked Zim up by the arm, turning to run as a massive, black crash of shadows erupted where'd they'd once been standing. The blast propelled them up through the air, wildly flailing with their arms connected like silhouetted rag dolls. They each held on instinctively, bracing for the ground to scrape past their bodies again.
However, to at least Gaz's surprise this time, they were halted by Zim's PAK legs. Digging through the dirt, velocity slowed and Zim unceremoniously let the gamer drop to the ground, craning his body forward in preparation to strike.
GIR and the weapons were much further now than before. The Invader loomed overhead, silhouetted and determined regardless. Insane idiot or no, Gaz had to compliment his stones for facing that thing... Either way, she didn't skip a beat.
"Distract it," she instructed, tossing a grenade over to Zim, "I'll get the weapons."
"Get GIR, too," bade Zim with a skillful catch, "He's closer, and we'll have an advantage in the air."
Smoke burst from nowhere right beside him. A set of talons surged forward and sliced right through the air Zim had once been, but the Irken's body was maneuvered out of way and before she could blink plunged a PAK leg right into its eye socket with a cry. Gaz took this as her cue to leave and went away.
Zim forced his body forward, straining to press the limb as far in as it could go in hopes of reaching a brain – should one be waiting in that skull. There was a vaguely apparent puncture where pseudo tissue parted, leaking fire out from the socket. The creature seemed discomforted from this…
There was light from not too far away, but in a fit of single-minded determination, Zim lacked concern. His view was locked into that of his victim, itching to tear the lumbering skull right from the neck...
A pair of human-shaped hands clutching at his PAK leg shook that view.
Zim shot his gaze down. The new figure was small. Smaller than he was. A familiar nutcracker uniform draped over her, ending only at the doll-like hands and at her neck. Dead, dead eyes were staring back up at him. Unwilling fear trickled down his nerves again, freezing him still where he was.
Another mannequin child? Why...? What was it about these things that impacted the adrenal functions…? How could they trap someone in a trance of built up trauma so easily…?! Why was moving such a struggle now?
"Why are neither of them ever happy to see you?" droned the mannequin kid in response. The world seemed to be shifting, like it was in a spoon's reflection.
He flinched from the blurring earth and skewered her through the chest with another PAK leg. She dangled limply, but something was different about this one than the one he'd killed earlier. A dark fluid was dripping from her lips…
Before the Irken could retort, the monster started chuckling. Something, too, was different about it though. The voice and mannerisms had changed entirely, favouring something more… Processed.
All across the mammoth body, various chunks of flesh wriggled apart from each other, exposing in total no less than sixty-six, newly-forged eyes to stare at him from all across the form. And then, instantaneously, the significance of the number clicked in like a bullet.
All of them were utterly dead of emotion, each a dull garnet in shade, and artificial in texture. None of the pupils that'd defined the lifeforms on Earth lingered in their rims, but instead a simple, solid colour peered back… The sort you'd find in an Empire far away from their current trajectory… But too dead to be fully Irken. No. This was a caricature of something else.
Each was zeroed in on him, casting a unified judgement.
Sixty-six. The exact number of eyes peering from Judgementia's Core Control Brain's chassis.
"Come now, Irken Zim," it crooned, utilizing the pitch of the Alpha-series model as it gradually pinched the limb out from its head. It didn't even look bothered, "That is no way to utilize a toothpick."
(-)
Her boots were too heavy. Gaz could hear the struggles going on behind her, just over the blood rushing in her ears. Honestly, she wasn't sure what surprised her more – the fact her heart felt like it was going to crack right off its arteries and dissolve altogether, or the reminder that she even had one. Spots fluttered over her vision and with each step, and she felt the world rock along without her. Reality had become a drunken dance, even more strenuous than usual. The effort it'd take a normal person to run, for her, brought her to a staggering speed-walk. Still, the youngest Membrane only quit when there was no competition. And eventually, lo and behold, she was pancaked right at GIR's side.
They were near one of those circles, but that wasn't her concern. His doggy suit was torn to hell. Silver glinted out from between the rags left, and though the body seemed fine… The interior couldn't have been faring well. Zim's minion seemed quite busy spewing static from his vocal processors, caught in some cycle of raising one arm, and then drawing it back with a troubling whirring noise that was reminiscent of an overheated computer. Grunting, Gaz got on her knees and propped him up to a sitting position.
"Toc-DIRECCCTTffzzzzzzshhhh- t-toquit-" it wailed, "ERROR, ERROfzzssshhhh BROfzzzsssKEN BROKEN I AM SO BROKENNNNNNN-"
Not one to waste time, she popped his head open. Sparking nipped out from cables where its oversized gun was connected. The gamer fiddled with some buttons and disconnected the weapon, which fell uselessly to their side. It had no ammunition left anyway… The cables slunk back into GIR's body, but more sparking was coming from the base of the empty head.
The sparks were being emitted from under a panel. She prepared for the absolute worse upon opening it. Hesitantly, her fingers pinched the metal piece, and pulled it back…
Only two wires were out of their ports.
…First Tak's ship and now this? Talk about an anti-climax. Well. Back they went, then.
GIR jolted and went still, eyes now dead. A Windows XP sound-effect left his speakers as his eyes returned blue…
Then red.
Gaz frowned in distaste. Now, his stupid-mode was obviously completely unhelpful for the current situation, but…
He hopped to his feet with a salute. "SIR unit model 00-2H3 reporting for duty," he recited.
Okay, THAT wasn't right.
She cleared her throat. "Uh, are y-"
SQUELCH
Bright light burst from behind her, traced with sloshy noises. Before she could make her confusion audible, the gamer felt something intangible and prickly. Right on her shoulder.
Something was off. Like something invisible was ruffling the hairs on her neck.
She turned her head to face the source, and saw the silhouetted form of a child standing in the circle, as though literally just summoned. White eyes shone back, framed by pale hair and a expression that seemed to have been slid on like a plastic mask. A nutcracker-esque uniform draped the body, pristine and proud on the form of her missing classmate.
The gamer froze.
Gaz had no friends out of choice. Francine Schmittendorf was a complete stranger – so much so, the gamer had only learned her name after she'd gone missing. She'd expected to see her body on the news at breakfast, shrugging off her loss with a nip of pizza.
Not in front of her, giving her character a look-over with dull, milky pupils.
As she kneeled frozen, the lips of her classmate moved robotically, as though reading a script. "Only one."
Another voice joined. "Just her."
She turned around. Another kid was staring at her arm. The features were exactly the same – the differing ethnicity, height, sex and hair colour didn't mean jack shit as far as she was concerned. He… It wore the exact same face. Same expression. Same tone.
"Only one left? Only what?"
A third loomed further away, digging its gaze into her ear. Gaz looked frantically around. There were six of them already.
"Only girl?"
"More than that…"
"Who are you?" she glowered, staring anxiously between the lot.
Their words all seemed to interconnect around her, forming an auditory circle of malformed insights that looped her in sound. With every syllable, the rim grew tighter. And deep into her chest, the verses constricted. Bleeding her of secrets. Even when she frantically looked down, away from their pale gazes as though each were the incarnate of Medusa, they kept going…
"Only one who knows?"
"Only one… Only one…"
"Only one left."
"Only one with eyes."
"Requesting Directive," GIR said.
"Only thinker."
"Thinker only?"
She'd read everything Rankle had written about this encounter, but it was now that she entirely understood what he'd meant. What he'd meant and more – no matter how she moved, her body wouldn't budge. Somehow, it was even worse than what he'd written down, and much to her panic each nerve was severed from one another. Vocal chords compressed in on themselves, left too dry to really use. She couldn't so much as breathe properly. All she could do was remain rigid as her mind was peeled apart fold by fold like rotted lettuce. Taking memory by memory to be viewed as they pleased...
Stop it
"Requesting Directive."
The children were approaching. The fear they artificially inflicted frustrated her, but none of her reflexes listened. Her chest quaked from her heart, leeching diseased vibrations beneath her skin. The squelching noises seemed to intensify, and the actual pressure on her body seemed to decrease, but the damage was done and for the life of her no matter how she strained her neck Gaz could not look up, not even when shadows grew over her body. Things were splatting against the ground, and movements that sounded inhuman. Wet clothing and sloshing… Distorting voices… Things were drawing closer…
All she could stare at were her boots. Words showered and dripped down her hair, more distorted than before.
"Monsters about."
"Them or her…?"
"Only in head."
"Whiner."
"Gone when dead, maybe?"
"Broken thing."
"Never a whiner. Never cried. Not like..."
"Brother's crazy."
"Not as much as her…"
"'Conscience? What's that mom?'"
"Don't whine now."
"Don't wanna hurt."
"Hide. Hide it. Hide everything. Hide-"
"Where'd mom go again...?"
"Only thing in mind is…"
"No response is being given. Poking protocol authorized," GIR droned, giving her leg a firm jab.
The contact broke the trance. It forced her nerves to respond, and even though the influence of the creatures threatened to swallow her again Gaz was able to summon enough strength to look up.
She did not scream. But she cursed. Loudly. Fearfully.
"What the fuck WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE F-"
The "children's" skins had been shed during the approach. Oil-like fluids pooled under the fledgling creatures, crumpling together at bizarrely hastened speeds into crude dust. Their shredded shells dangled off positions along their shifted, towering forms, like sagging coats on a rack with tendrils jutting out their empty lips, drifting in the ragged breaths exuding from the many, many mouths of the things they'd apparently covered. Crusted feet, four of them per creature, staggered immaturely over to her, connected to crooked legs to a writhing… "Body", of tendrils and teeth that seemed to be in a cycle of constantly melting and reforming. Each had to be at least eight feet. Walking Lovecraftian nightmares, that emitted horrific squishing sounds whenever they moved.
She noted six of them were circling an eerily stilled Zim further away, much the same manner they were trying for her. Each of their voices were dissipating more and more into monstrous wails the more she woke up – how the hell that worked, Gaz lacked the interest to look into. Either way, they were too goddamn close...!
"Get rid of 'em," she swallowed, backing up, only to find they'd circled her, "K-Kill them, dammit!"
"Weapons compromised," relayed GIR. Almost comically, none of this bothered the robot. He just seemed unable to really sense the danger.
Didn't matter, they were lumbering closer. Gaz snarled. "Then get me out of here!"
"Affirmative!" GIR activated his rockets and grabbed the gamer by the leg, blasting off from the ring of creepy horrors. Gaz grimaced as she watched them get further away. The misanthrope could remember the last time she'd been left shaking from anything traumatic, and that had been a long time ago.
(-)
Question marks.
Easily Zim's most hated punctuation. Probably the most hated out of any Latin character – there was nothing about it he liked. He didn't like how others applied it to him, or how it'd corrupt ordinary sentences with the raise of an octave, or how Dib never stopped using them in everything he was presented. Hated how its top cheated being short by disconnecting from the ground, and how it curved like a fish-hook. Hated how those shapes currently plunged through his mind, down to the depths for interesting information to snag. How they cut through what should've been indisputable – facts that might as well've been carved in stone were nothing in the face of these terrible letters. Zim avoided them whenever he could, but now he was being forced to ingest their hooks by the triple digits. Each inconsistency, each weaknesses was stirred right up for the monster to enjoy. Reeled to the surface by the eyes of the children, going dead and dry and ugly in their dangling world.
Questions, questions...
They were so stupid, he couldn't believe he'd even concealed these horrible inquiries. In fact, it was easier to believe that they were not his own, that they'd merely been planted in there by the monster out of sadism to trip his psyche up. Maybe they had. He could not say.
Questions piled about the Empire. About the Tallest. About the Brains. About him. About their loyalty. About Tak. About Dib...
Hundreds for each subject, and they all came at him so fast, he couldn't think of a good lie for anyone by the time they'd been replaced by kin. Away they bounced, churning between his brain and his PAK to cancer right in the core of his squeedily-spooch. A sick weight of words, bogging down.
It was some sort of spell, he'd come to realize. As faulty as Zim's emotional inhibitor was, it was never this awful. He'd wrestled their attempts to break him, he had. But they'd proven to be too much in such an awful way, he'd almost have to applaud them for their inventiveness – see, the monster hadn't moved much at all at first. It preferred to leave Zim squirming between the gazes of it and the kids as he struggled to stab every one of them. But critically wounded or no, those kids had always gotten right back up, even when sections of their plastic shells had crumbled. Always, they stitched together again, their dark insides being leaked didn't matter. And always, they kept staring and murmuring.
Always, the eyes healed.
After his nerves had finally been corroded over, his neck was redirected to the many, many gazes in the blackness. The vaguely Irken ones, processed to seem friendlier to the people the Brains directed. Their Dib-murdering shell had vanished some time ago, leaving just a set of retinas that were filled with awful memories. He watched them uncensored, (the more recent ones, anyway) lurking in the red waters like fish. Those horrible question marks were independently being formed in him, too, but to drop the line as the beast had… To even attempt such a felony… To hook those sinful, uncut thoughts and fill his belly with them…
"IRKEN INVADER ZIM, FOR SINGLEHANDEDLY RUINING OPERATION IMPENDING DOOM... ...YOU WILL BE RE-ENCODED. NO LONGER AN INVADER, YOU WILL BE FOREVER BANISHED TO THE IRKEN SNACKING PLANET OF FOODCOURTIA."
"Thank you... Invader Zim! Without your efforts out there, the… heh! …The entire operation would..."
"Hahahaha!"
"…heheh, would surely crumble...!"
"You are no commander: you are a threat to the mission! Your methods are stupid! Your progress has been stupid! Your intelligence is stupid! For the sake of the mission – YOU MUST BE TERMINATED!"
"So, whaddaya think? Defective or innocent?"
"Oh, ZIM? Defective, all the way. This Evaluation's just a formality so they can get rid of ZIM officially…"
They murmured too many awful words. His body had grown heavy.
"OKAY! Break's over! LET'S GET THIS FORMALITY OVER WITH!"
"We've seen enough. Zim – you've been nothing but a curse to the Empire. If Tallest Miyuki or Spork were here, they'd say so, too..."
"IRKEN ZIM's I.D PAK is damaged and has led to a corrupt data path. HE IS... A DEFECTIVE."
"…He's a DEFECTIVE!" Tallest Purple wailed, "You ALREADY RULED!"
? Lies. All of them. ? Li?e?s. Funny senses of humour ? the Tallest were funny people the Control Brains ? were probably funny too ?
?great big machines ? with codes for person?alities needed a laugh too maybe they just ?
?
maybe they just ?
maybe he just brought ?them ?joy ?
?
maybe?
may?be ? ? ?
"Maybe it's time you stopped running," the Control Brain spoke. There'd been so many holes burned into him by the eyes, it was a surprise he was still intact at all. Hot breath fell over his whole, wretched body – accompanied by a straining sound, like a massive set of jaws were unhinging, "...And simply accept that your best use is to disappear."
Zim was dead of sound. Motionless of spirit. As shadows fell over him, he found he was kinda happy he couldn't see the creature's eyes anymore – just the lines of teeth. A mess of Zims stared back in each enamel, small, genuinely knowing his burdens, and very tired in this swallowed knowledge.
So small…
(no!)
Perhaps this w-
Rockets fizzed past. And Gaz yelled somewhere.
His antenna flinched as a massive roar exploded over the whole room, and over him. The enamels ceased shrouding him and aimed all over the place. Upwards, to the robot that had uppercut their lower jaw, and downward, bellowing profanity after profanity to the small child several feet below that'd stuck its foot with her bat. Good and woken up from the horrible trance, Zim found his lower half snared in the monster's palm, the horrible memories gone from immediate sight. Disturbing as hell monsters circled below the monster's grip, and unable to really do anything, he just… Watched the show.
Gaz Membrane stood at her full height beneath its knee, glaring right back up at the miscreation. The girl was deranged, decorated by lines of blood trailing from cuts all along her form, and had her equally white teeth pulled into a frown. You'd almost forget she was human, even with the shuddering from her exhaustion in play.
After she'd inspired its deepest rage, apparently, it decided she was funny. So, it chuckled condescendingly and snatched her legs by the tail, lifting the girl to eye-level. Its pitch changed again, but this time… It seemed to be using a woman's voice to address her.
"Don't be so upset," it grinned to her, opening its maw to show of the dark expanse of its throat, "Everyone gets a turn…"
Gaz froze right there, eyes wide. Whatever it'd used seemed to chill her to her core. Zim meanwhile used this opportunity to chuck his grenade in.
Its eyes comically widened. It went back to the normal voice again.
"SON OF A-"
It probably had attempted to regurgitate it back up, hence why it burst in its throat. Its foot stamped violently and it dropped Zim, backing off to scrape madly at its whole body as it went back into the same void as it had earlier. The pair fell not too far apart, gasping to stand. There was little time to lose, as the fellow monsters crowded around still. Zim looked over at his unlikely (and oddly lost-looking) partner in crime, defensively crossing his arms.
"…Eh… …Zim was a perfect diversion," he feebly muttered. He looked to his boots, urgently trying to edit the memory of that showdown into something… Not as horrible.
Purge it, purge it, he thought, Purge, purgepurgepurgepurgepurgepur
She shook her head, trying to snap out of her funk. "F-For crying out loud, you give Princess Peach a run for her money," Gaz muttered back, "Also, before you freak out," she pointed to the mass of creepy, multi-mouthed tendril monsters thundering over to them, "I have no idea what those things are, but the plastic kids can't hypnotize you as easily like that. I don't know why. Maybe the plastic covering them was magic or something, or they can't talk in that form as well. It doesn't make much sense-"
"G-EEEEAAAHHHH! GIR!" Zim shrieked like a pansy as the lumbering abominations trampled forward to their position, letting out inhuman bays all the way, "Take us to the weapons immediately!"
"YES MY LORD!" GIR swooped down and shot away with the fairly traumatized kids. The monsters pursued loudly, but their multiple legs were no match for standard-Irken-issued rockets.
GIR politely let them go a ruler's-worth off the ground. Quickly, Zim rolled to the ground and plunged his hands into the jacket, finding all the plasma-based weapons he could. Their only known way of defense through those tendrils. Four pistols and one rifle. He tossed Gaz two pistols and began snapping the spare rifle together.
"Do these things have rounds?" she asked, eyeing the beasts stampeding their way.
"They should be good for about… Forty uses. After that, they'll explode," he explained, daring to grin upon hearing the ends click together.
Gaz tugged the rifle away from Zim and open fired on the front line. A pink, sizzling beam burst through and burned through at least three layers of their tissue. Each mouth opened to scream – lights flickered inside, each one in a different position inside each cretin. Souls, she figured. There was one she'd fully exposed, and that vanished altogether. The others stopped from the damage, but quickly mended their flesh together and resumed running.
She turned, expecting Zim to be there to help her cowboy' it up all the way to the main circle, only to find he'd started climbing the walls with his PAK legs while GIR flew at his side, essentially leaving her for dead against the hoard.
"WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING?!" she exploded after him.
Zim looked down dumbly. "You will distract them while Zim blows up the main circle-thing. It's genius, yes?"
"NO - I'LL DIE, YOU STUPID FUCK!" she shouted, firing frantically at the creatures swarming her. Two more disappeared, but in a herd of sixty three that meant little. Wounded Lovecraftian horrors just meant an annoying blockade to step over in order to reach the drained ten year old.
"Oh, do not be angry, Gaz-human, eh…" he looked around nervously. His PAK limbs brought him higher up, leaving his body to cross its legs as though he were sitting in contemplation on some barstool, "…Eh… Perseverance is the key? You simply…Eh…"
That glare would've been enough to make Sizz-Lorr give up altogether. Zim grinned nervously, considering his options. If Gaz survived – unlikely, but then again, like her brother she often broke human expectations – the monster would be the last thing to concern himself with. An angry, revitalized Gaz was a hell no one dared enter...
"…GIR! Heh! Uh… Support the Gaz human against the stampede of hideous tentacle beasts!" he clapped his hands gingerly, "Yeees. Ha. That, uh…" human females didn't destroy people who complimented them, right? "Zim thinks your capabilities of spreading untold doom and terror are lovely!"
Several shots broke through the storm of monsters. Gaz's reply was louder.
"KILL YOURSELF."
"O-Okay," Zim muttered, speeding his ascent, "Have, uh… Have fun..."
The way up wasn't terribly smooth. His instincts were deeply bothered. You see, the monster had still not emerged, but the tendrils had shot right back up out of the circle, layered on like squirming spaghetti as though it already had. The Irken frowned at this. Something was off...
Some of those smaller circles it'd cast on the walls kept spitting out more multi-legged monsters. Every time Gaz and GIR disintegrated one, it'd come back out twenty seconds later through some surface all over again. And the ones in the walls wanted him dead more. They were relatively sluggish on the walls, so avoiding them wasn't too difficult…
…But avoiding the main monster tearing claws-first out one of the sub-circles, before charging after him like a teleporting train rather was.
"HOW?!" he yelped dropping down several feet as it tore past. He reattached to the wall of course, but he was still precariously positioned diagonally-down from its path. "HOW DID YOU- I THOUGHT YOU NEEDED THE MAIN ONE-"
"Wow, it's almost like I made these little doors, or something!" it licked its lips as it slowed, "In fact… Gee! It's almost like that main circle's strong enough, I can channel its power into any of the smaller ones! ...Y'know, for an 'advanced creature', your intelligence is more than a bit disappointing."
Before Zim could really react, an all-too-familiar tail crushed around his shoulders. Again. This time making sure his PAK legs were seized in turn. His body was cruelly turned in air, and with fearful grunt its gore-caked talons pinched his head to look at the fight occurring down below.
"Anyhow, bug. Time for your boot. Look down," it hushed all too close to his antenna, "See that? Those broken little pals you've got, just staggering to fight off my cheapest toys? Those were your cavalry. They're gonna be ash soon. Just like your dreams. Just like your home in this city. And when I'm through with city? I'll keep going," it squeezed tighter, prompting Zim to choke mid-squirm. It almost purred as it continued, giving his scalp a gentle, bloody stroke.
"When I get enough power, I'll be able to make big doors all by myself. Know what that means? 'Means I'll go all over this miserable planet, devouring life after life. When popping human lives in like grapes by themselves gets boring?: I'll hit schools. I'll hit hospitals. I'll hit entire metropolises in fell swoops. By the thousands. And when I've had my fill, this whole world, and many after it, will be my playground, my platter, and do you know what anyone, anywhere, will be able to do about it? Nothing. Because there can only be one god, space bug. And…"
It gave him a none-too-affectionate squeeze with a hungry grin.
"…Really? Come on. It never was gonna be you."
Squishing the Invader to a choking extent(almost literally crushing his words), the creature unlatched itself from the wall and plunged to the floor - slamming its victim down first. The impact shredded through Zim's form and triggered various crunching noises throughout the Irken's skeletal structure, and much to Zim's horror he soon found his ribs cracked and his legs utterly immobile.
Mid-yowling, as if to mock him, the tail coiling his torso lifted him tauntingly about five feet in the air. Zim's upper-body vainly struggled in excruciation while his legs limply dangled, wrestling all his strength to free his hyperventilating form but to no avail. A calm, red-velvet glow basked out the creature's eye-sockets as it smiled genially to his face, letting its tail slowly slither itself away. Unceremoniously, he was dropped face-first into the muck. Pain seared through his nerves. And to finish it off, before he could even recover, the creature's hoof nudged him to his back and slammed onto his arm, squashing it from the shoulder like a bird's wing.
Zim squeezed his eyes shut and howled out in agony. Hot, rotting breath streamed past his face, and he thrashed his neck about best he could to escape the scent - it only escalated the pain but for Tallest sake he couldn't bear any of this. Smelled awful. Felt awful. Everything was broken and his legs wouldn't work. A thick liquid splattered on his cheek…
His regeneration factor must've been having a field day…
Against fear, he dared open his eyes to face his soon-to-be killer and found it sporting the same, awful grin mere inches away. Saliva drizzled down the visage leaning over him, concealing a sea of canines under its upturned lips. The head alone dwarfed his whole body…
Nestled inside every living Irken's squeedily-spooch was a cardiovascular unit. And away his sped, like a sugar-high locomotive in his chest, faster than it'd ever gone in memory.
"Comfy?" it asked in that same monotone, "Good. Business will commence, defect."
Demurely, it just curled one finger against the scab lining his stomach. One, filthy claw pressed ever so gently against the thin, translucent line – as if teasing the wound.
It broke through. Then it dug in. And then it met its mark.
Like a pair of fish-hooks, its digits snared a tiny chunk of Zim's squeedily-spooch. His organ squelched in protest and started moving sporadically at the contact. Breathing hurt, yet Zim couldn't stop swallowing buckets of oxygen either way, spilling air with his hemolymph and his yowls to cease.
And just like that it yanked the segment out like a band aid.
A long, bawling noise left him as it was stripped from its bulk. The portion extracted was a wriggling little piece – a fraction of the digestive system, probably, couldn't have been much larger than a coin. And just like that, the pink flesh was discarded right over the monster's shoulder, as though it were a three-leafed clover.
"Loves me…"
It dug back in. The Irken trashed and screamed as another little segment was excruciatingly hooked.
He was practically convulsing where he lay, hemolymph spilling over his lips and choking his pleas to cease. His hand gripped the monster's and tried to shake it free, get out get out please
It tugged again.
He screamed again.
"Loves me not!" over its shoulder, it went.
"Y-YOU SICK…!" screeched Zim, "STOP, STOP! IF YOU'RE TO KILL ME THEN DO IT NOoOoOW!" he choked on his own fluids, "S-STOP THIIIiiis PLeaSE juST stOP-!"
"FWEH-HEH-EHEHEHEHEHEH!" it cackled, "YOU'RE FUN! MOST OF THESE INSECTS WOULD'VE DIED FROM THE FALL ALONE!"
"WHAAA-huT EVE-VeN ARE YOU?!" Zim wailed, "W-WHY MUST YOU DEFILE ZIIIIIM'S Lu-LIFE?!"
"Heh. 'What am I'... Question of a lifetime, isn't it?" it purred, leaning in, "I suppose it's the same as you, defect," it hissed lowly, "Same as your friend there, and your dead boyfriend - an ABOMINATION. Nothing more, and nothing less. You understand, right?"
Zim gurgled. His tongue bled.
"Fweh-heh. Doesn't matter," it grinned, leaning in, "I can feel your soul, kid - I can feel what I took, what's left. It's sloshing around in there, y'know, tired and fr-"
Scarlet light abruptly exploded from behind them. Except this time, it startled the monster, too. The two non-humans stared at the swarming light and cackling power exploding out suddenly from the cracks between the dying tendrils.
Ash from the tendril-nest fanned upwards from the heat. Above her, like a halo, GIR swerved in circles with the plasma pistols in hand, tearing through monster after falling monster approaching. Pink, deadly glows filtered through the quasi-confetti-wings, and behind her crumbling curtain of destruction, Gaz stood with a sleek, derisive, yet prideful glare.
"Hey. Guess I'm fun too," she spat.
It forgot all about Zim. Shaking with a burning emotion, it withdrew its fingers, and slowly began walking towards her.
Then it got on all fours and starting screeching in rage.
Gaz tossed the plasma rifle away, and gripped her trusty bat instead. The monster tore through from the other side of the room, on her within ten seconds. It's massive body took for the air in a curving pounce, jaws stretched apart as its saliva glistened. At least three hundred little girls her size would've fit in that maw, and she could see hundreds more sets of her eyes reflecting back from the monster's teeth.
She didn't flinch.
Gaz lunged for its chest, to where the stake was just beginning to creep out the flesh. It caught on to what she was about to do too late – with all the strength left in her arms, the girl smashed.
Home run.
It bellowed, its form unhinging on itself. It clenched in, pushing its flesh together, but its fingers started unravelling and fell to the ground, twitching. It glared at her, beginning to disintegrate all together.
"Thiiisss… ISN'T OVER… I HAVE MORE THAN ONE DOOR, KIDS!" it boasted to the two, "I WILL END YOU BOTH, ONE WAY – OR ANOTHER!"
"Nice try…" grunted the gamer, staggering to her feet, "You're holding on by just a thread... You wouldn't have tried to protect this circle so bad if it were that disposable. Face it: you're an eldritch abomination who got done in by some dumb kids – namely me. It's a game over. Accept it."
"D…Did I, now…? Fweh…EHEHEHEH! …Huh-ow about some trivia, then, Skulls: Did you know, it takes more effort for this door to keep me in your world, than it does for my tu-toys?" it curled its distorting lips up menacingly, "…And that… There's s-so much magic being unleashed from the break in the lines, I could… I could manipulate it to drag you all down to my home with me if I so much as snuh-snapped my fingers?"
Before either of them could say a word, it snapped its fingers and the magic turned a sickening, chunky black.
"OOPS!" it teased, "I geh-guess you guys only have thu-thirty minutes to flee this whole damn building now that it's being dragged into the deep depths of Spooky Realm… Sucks to be you! Oh, and it's dangerous for tots like yourselves to go alone, so please, do enjoy the company of my underlings," it dug into the light etching from its chest, and much like before unleashed more soul-rain-stuff to sear another hundred or so circles all around them. Mannequin children started to rise from them, moaning like creepers. "Also, I have a special gift for you two – 'specially you, Skulls – as a bonus! …But, given its unique nature, I'm afraid it'll be a little bit late to the party. Don't worry, though: trust me, you'll know when you see it!"
It looked her over hungrily. "Actually, I think I'll give you an additional bonus gift, to make up for the wait. Right now," it purred. Its malformed hand crackled with power and before she could move, it slammed its palm right into her eye. Gaz shrieked as the impact shred through her veins and deep into her dermis, feeling awash with something invasive and awful. Her body fell back to the ground, flailing and housing the glowing orifice in her hand.
"GEEYAAAAHHHH!" she hollered, agony filling her form so thoroughly.
Of course, the Abomination laughed at her. "Merry early Christmas! Lord knows it's better than anything your daddy got you!" its malforming tail scratched at its chin in mock thought. "Is that everything…? Hmm. I think so. Ta-ta, children! I'll see you once more, when the moon good and weird."
And then it vanished, just like that.
Meanwhile, left shuddering in pain on the ground, Zim's PAK clock beeped.
Thirty minutes until shut-down.
A/N: (Mini crack-exchange my sister thought of:
Gaz: Zim, wait! I love you! Please come back!
Zim: I'M GAAAAAAAY, BITCH. *middle fingers and leaves to shitty swag-meme music*
Cute innit? Anyhow HOO-BOY! I DID IT. THAT WAS HELL.
…now for the next one. ;-; pray for me. if that sucker's gonna be as difficult as this one, I think I might need it...