Warning! This story is going to be very long! If you cannot stand long stories then do not read. If you do not like stories about incompetent aliens that no one likes then do not read this. If you cannot stand reading about the imminent destruction of Earth and enemies having to unite to stop the greater threat then DO NOT READ!!!

Thank you, that is all…

Invader Zim- The End?

Chapter 8

Zim struggled against the currents of the river. The water stung him. He swallowed it and it stung all the way through him now. There was no escaping it. It burned through his green flesh. The pain was too much to bear. He could not stand it. There was no way anyone could. The pain was intense, horribly intricate yet simple. It stung. That was simple. The way it stung him, without any explanation of pain was the more intricate portion.

He could no longer see Gir. Had the robot sunken to the bottom? It was possible. He was alone in the water now, struggling against the waves. His ship was sinking. The pull was taking him with it.

The Irken struggled to stay above the water. He could not any longer. Zim took a breath and was then engulfed by the pain once more, this time in all directions. The water dragged him down with his ship. He was going to die on Earth. The planet that he had always tried to conquer.

He lost his air fast.

Zim's mouth opened and the bubbled left over floated to the surface.

He was dieing.

---

Gaz rushed to the water's edge. She took off her shoes and her socks. Then she took off her pants. She was now in her underwear and shirt. She dove into the water as Dib caught up with her.

Dib called after his sister. "Gaz! What are you doing? He's gone for good! You'll be dragged down!"

She did not hear him.

Gaz swam under the surface of the water and searched for Zim. She could not see him. The water was clear but it was deep and she could not see very far down. Gaz came up for air once and then went back under. She swam as fast and as deep as she could. There was a popping in her ears. She stopped for a moment and shook her head. Then she continued.

There was a light, faint blinking at the base of the river. She dove, kicking her feet behind her hard for speed.

Zim.

The alien no longer had his eyes open. They were closed, as was his mouth. He was floating aimlessly in the water. He was unconscious.

She swam as fast as she could now. Gaz reached out as far as she found possible and gripped Zim's hand. She pulled him close to her body and held him tight as she attempted to make it to the surface. She was running out of air and had to go fast. That only made it worse. The girl darted through the water, kicking her legs and fanning one arm. The other hand held Zim. She could see the sun reflecting into the river. They were almost there.

She felt a jab in her chest.

She craved air.

She craved oxygen.

Her mind told her to let him go.

Something else told her otherwise.

Gaz continued. She swam and swam as fast as she could and then… broke the surface of the water.

Gaz came up gulping for air. Her hair fell backward and whipped over her head. She took in one breath and then lifted Zim to the air.

He did not breathe.

She swam to the shore and lifted Zim out. Gaz placed him lying on the grass and looked at him. He chest was still. She pressed her hands to his chest. She was not sure if it would work for an Irken but she decided to try it anyway. She pressed down four times. Then she lifted up and placed her lips to his. She blew inwards once and the listened for a beat of something inside him; she did not know what. There was nothing. She tried again. Nothing. Once more. Nothing. Gaz started to panic. She tried again and again but came up with the same. Zim was not breathing and CPR was not working. What did you do if an Irken stopped breathing? She thought for a moment. She clenched a fist and punched his squeedly spooch.

Zim let out a cried squeal.

Gaz smiled.

He was breathing again. They were heavy and pained but they were breaths nonetheless.

Zim looked upwards at the sun. It was blinding. Gaz leaned into his view and the sun could be seen from behind her. It was all around her form. She was soaking wet and dripping. But she was careful not to drip on him. He looked at her for a second. She seemed to glow. The Irken invader extended his hand to her face. He did not recognize her. "Am I… Am I in… Heaven?"

"Do you even know what heaven is?"

"I've studied it…"

She laughed. "Why do you think you're in heaven?"

"Because I can see an angel."

"Oh, really?" She smirked with sarcasm. Now he was seeing things.

"Yes. She's right there. She's glowing." Gaz rolled her eyes. "She's all wet though and I don't know why." Gaz's eyes widened. She got to her feet. Zim's hand fell in his weak state. "Why did she move now? She was right there… Now it's just the sun…" Zim blacked out. At least he was still breathing.

Dib, Kim, Tak and a wet Gir came up to them. Gaz was standing over Zim. He had passed out from the pain of the water. Tak walked to his side. She stepped in the puddle of water and hurriedly jumped backwards. "Ow! What is that stuff?"

"Water."

"Water?"

"It's not good for Irkens."

"And yet humans are unaffected?" Tak pointed to the soaking wet Gaz.

"Nope."

She frowned. "That hardly seems fair."

---

Gaz had dried off now. They were all back in Zim's base. They patiently waited in the kitchen as Gir prepared a batch of pancakes. Tak was down in the bowels of the base with Zim. He had still not woken up. His skin was badly burned and scared from contact with the water. Kim sat next to Dib. She had not known about the fact that Irkens could be hurt by water and the sight of Zim's mangled and flamed body had frightened her. Although she hunted aliens relentlessly she could still be scared out of her mind. She was leaning against Dib's side. They were on separate chairs but the edges were very close together. Kim laid her head on Dib's shoulder. The sight of Zim like that had made her cry. Her face was badly stained with tears. Even Dib had felt bad for him. To fall into the river must have been torture. The pain must have been unbearable. What would it have been like? To be blasted out of the sky? To fall into the element that caused you pain? What must it be like to feel that pain? He knew what it was like for Zim when he was struck with a water balloon but what about a river? The pain he must have felt. Dib actually felt himself feeling grief and sorrow at Zim's pain. It was so strange. Gaz stayed quiet. She was wrapped in a towel in the corner of the room. All she did was stand there and stare at the floor. The fridge hid her from their sight. She didn't feel like being seen. She just wanted to shrink into the shadows. She had always loved when people were hurt but now… She didn't know what she was feeling. Usually she would have laughed at him. But she saved him. She saved him? What was wrong with her? Was she sick? Had she caught a cold? Had Zim really hypnotized her like Dib had said? What? She didn't know. All that went through her head was the strange feeling that she had at that very moment. Fear? Depression? No. It had not been a horrible feeling. When Zim called her an angel, what did she feel then? She did not know. She had never felt anything like it before. It was a strange feeling. It had not passed. It had stayed. She shook her head to release it to the air like she would carbon dioxide. It had not left. Through her life all had been dark but now… The light was shining down… Only to reveal more darkness hidden before hand… The room was quiet. Even Gir had stopped singing the doom song. His emotion chips had been updated so he knew when sorrow was to be shown. It was then. But his old instincts still told him to whip up a batch of pancakes for everyone. He did so, he added the ingredients, mixed the batch, poured it into a pan, cooked the pancakes. All was silent. No one spoke.

The garbage can lid opened with a buzz. Dib, Kim and Gir all jumped. Gaz shrank down further. There was an elevator coming up. Tak appeared and stepped out of the can. She pulled off a pair of pink gloves and sat then on a counter top close by. She did not look at anyone in particular. Kim spoke up. "How… How is he?"

Tak sighed. "He'll need his rest but I think he'll be ok."

"That was a lot of water." Dib looked at his hands. "A lot of pain to go through." Everyone nodded. "How could he have gotten through so much agony? How could he have lived while floating in the element that caused him so much pain? How could…" Dib flinched. Kim had jabbed him in the stomach. He looked down at her tear stained face. She had started to cry again. His mouth said nothing more.

There was a moment of silence.

Gir pulled plates out of a cupboard. He set them on the table and put three pancakes on each. Tak stared at them. "I can't eat those."

"Yes you can."

"…"

"Zim's eaten waffles before… They're close to the same thing…"

At the call of Zim's name the room went silent once more. Even Tak felt sorrow for the Irken. The one that had caused her to fail in her training and had imprisoned her on a planet on a clean-up crew. Even after that she felt sorry for him.

Dib looked over to the corner behind the fridge. "Gaz…" The figure in the shadows shrank back so that no one could see her anymore.

Tak leaned over. "I thought she had left."

No. Everyone was there.

---

The hours passed slowly. Tak allowed no one to go into the base. She knew that Zim would not like that. No one was to go in. No one was to see him in his sick and mangled state.

Gir had prepared many more pancakes. Dib had eaten four so far. Kim had eaten three and Tak had eaten twelve. Dib and Kim were fascinated with her appetite. Gaz's plate remained untouched. She had not moved from the shadows.

She watched them from within the darkness. Do not bother to try and make it into the lab. I will stop you. That is what Tak had said. Gaz frowned. She would go in. She would go in and see Zim. Whether he wished it or not she would do it. She looked out at the others. They were talking. She wasn't listening to them. Gaz poked her head out from the shadows of the fridge. The last time she had been in Zim's base she had noticed something that came to her mind as an advantage. She decided to use it. Gaz took her towel off and opened the freezer of the fridge a crack. She slipped in the center of the towel and closed the door so that the white cloth hung there. The girl got to her belly and slid her body across the smooth tiled floor of the kitchen. No one noticed her. She slunk to the toilet and looked inside. She crawled in careful not to alert anyone and it immediately took her down even though she was still on her hands. As the elevator went down she lowered and stood back on her feet. Gaz looked to her right. There was a flashing blue button. She pressed it and the toilet hole above her closed and looked from the inside. No one would be able to follow her if they found that she was gone.

The elevator stopped a few floors down and she got off. She stepped into the room. The metal was cold against her bare feet. She looked around but saw only tubes and machines around her. There was no Zim in sight. Tak had come up through the garbage can. Perhaps she should have gone through it instead of the toilet. But she continued, even with her doubts, into the bowels of Zim's base.

She searched for quite some time. But it was to no avail. She could not find the Irken invader. He was nowhere to be found on this level.

Gaz went up a level in the elevator.

There were, what seemed to be, cryogenics tubes all over this floor. Instead of being frozen, however, it seemed the patients were suspended in some sort of goo. It was green. No so much like Irken skin but lighter and more animated.

She walked along rows of these tubes until she came to a main console. Gaz looked it over and rubbed her chin. She pressed a red button and the whole of the console lit up. It spoke.Please enter selected cryotube co-ordinates. She rubbed her head in thought. There was a panel next to her. She ran her finger along it. The computer spoke again. Please enter name of subject in stasis. Now she knew.

"Zim."

Rank?

"Invader."

Are you kidding me?

"No."

Stop pulling my chip. Zim? An invader?

"Yes! Now just find him!"

All right! All right! Sheesh! The compute whirred. A metal panel rose up behind it to reveal a glass wall. Gaz stared in shock at the many tubes hanging from the walls. It was like in Monsters Inc. where all of the doors were suspended in that one huge room. Gaz's eyes opened wide as she looked at them. Most were empty but some had human subjects. She laughed at one boy that had a huge device with a smile sticking up and out of his head. He looked ridiculous yet he was smiling and just kept saying, 'I'm… so… happy! So… very… happy! Monster! Happy! So… happy!'.

One tube released itself from the rack close to the back at the very top. She watched as it made it's way over to the glass panel. Then it was suspended there. She could not see inside it. There was fog over the tube's window. She coughed into her hand. A robotic hand reached out and rubbed the fog off the window.

She stared.

It was Zim. His form was floating in the green fluid. His eyes were closed and a series of tubes came out of his back. Where his usual pack was there were now only cylindrical wires. The pack was attached to a separate portion of the cylinder that stuck out. His arm was wrapped with a sequence of wires that connected into his flesh. The middle finger of his left hand had a clamp device on it and there were two others clamped onto his antenna. There was a type of orange crust around his eyes with some sort of strange, yellow goo to follow. He looked so peaceful for a moment. That was before she noticed his poor form and burned body. The effect of the water had taken its toll on his flesh and had burned near the whole way through in some parts. She could see some parts that were uncovered and then the strange, unknown color of his blood beyond that. The color of Irken blood was not one that was known to Earth. She did not know the color and so merely referred to it as Irken from that day on. He had a mask that fed something into his system that sat over his mouth and his eyes were tight. Little, spider-like machines worked there way up and down in body from inside the tube. Electrical sparks would be released, by their arms, into his flesh where it was burned the most and he would slowly heal. Very slowly. It seemed like an eternity as one spider worked its way to a burn on his arm and slowly worked away at it until it was healed up fully. Gaz just stood there and stared at the Irken invader. He was so helpless in that tube.

She looked beside her and noticed one single button for security purposes. She pressed it and stared at Zim once more.

---

Zim opened his eyes a slit to be met by a yellow-orange colored crust and goop around his eyes. In Irken the term for it was 'Gagnixo sludge'. He blinked a few times. It pained him to do so. But he did it anyway just to clear his eyes.

Gaz was there. She was leaving.

He watched her enter the elevator with curiosity.

The elevator closed and he could have sworn she saw him.

Zim thought to himself before he fell back into a deep and soundless dream.

What was she doing down here?

---

Gaz came up through the garbage to be met by surprised faces and inarticulate stares. She ignored them and headed back to her shadowed corner behind the fridge. There she stayed.

A fight ensued between Tak and Kim.

Dib broke it up.

Gaz thought to herself. Stupid…