Authors Note:
I'm editing out the crap that was here before. Wow I'm a serious windbag.
Also, what's this? Sudden activity after so many years away? You damn right.
The King of all Invader Zim fanfiction is returning, and I bring epic in my wake.
ANYWAY, the two genres mentioned for this are very innacurate, curse this websites only two genre choices!
This story contains ROMANCE, PAIN, ANGUISH, HUMOUR, AND PERSONAL GROWTH.
THERE WILL ALSO BE EVENTUAL ZAGR.
It is a story about life.
Zim's eyes flickered half open. He felt like he had gone through the entire of his Devastis training in a day. He couldn't move; his body ached so much. He clenched a hand, and let out a low groan. Pain shot through his arm and he clenched his teeth together and his body stiffened. This in turn only caused more pain. He took in a shuddered breath, finding that even his very insides hurt. Pain didn't explode over him. Pain only explodes when it's concentrated in one spot and then it fades just as quickly. This pain was more of a...fire that licked and burnt and tortured every cell inside him. His skin was like it was melting in rain, his insides felt like they where being kicked, painfully, into motion for the very first time. Even his very breaths made his eyes water. It was like no pain he had ever felt, or thought, or even wished upon his enemy before. And he had wished some terrible things upon his enemies.
He blacked out.
When he came around again, the sunlight was higher on the wall where it shone through the window. Zim was still in pain, but now less so then before. He was able to look around and finally take stock of his surroundings. However, his vision was...blurry. He couldn't seem to be able to focus well on anything. Things shimmered and waved around him, but, thankfully, they where slowly gaining some solidarity.
He was surrounded by white, sterile white, in a small room. He was lying on a hospital bed, which had white sheets and a blue blanket across it. In the corner was a wooden chair and above him, circling the bed, was a curtain rail, with the curtain pulled to the right of him. To the far right was a window, of which a not-to-late afternoon sun was shining through, and a brown wooden door to his left. He suddenly noticed something that was also to his left, a drip. It was filled with a translucent liquid, and it was attached to his arm. He immediately went to remove it, but then he noticed something about his arm.
It wasn't green.
It was an ill looking white. He, despite the pain that pulsed thought it, lifted it up, inspecting it. He slowly, trembling, moved it closer, so he could get a better view as his vision was still blurry. It was his arm, it had to be, the pain was telling him so. But...this was a human arm. His eyes travelled to his palm, four fingers and a thumb, un-gloved, thin and bony. He looked from the palm to the back of this hand and to the palm again, eyes wide in shock. The pain suddenly seemed to descend to a dull pulsing numbness, and a sinking sick feeling began to boil in his squeedly spooch, or what he assumed to be his squeedly spooch. He flexed his fingers, clenching his hand into a weak fist and open again. They responded...but...this was impossible.
Zim decided he needed to find a mirror, fast.
He forced himself upright, his body yelling a refusal, but Zim ignored it. His brain noted the surprising ease at which he had done that, almost like his PAK wasn't weighting him down. But he brushed this off as impossible, as he couldn't live without his PAK.
He pulled the drip from his arm, noticing with some horror that his right arm was just like his left.
He grimaced as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Then he stopped, his eyes widening again. He had toes. His feet were the same ill white colour of his arms. He moved his foot, silently gasping in horror that it was his foot. His insides sank quicker, and he could almost taste sick at the back of his throat.
He saw that he was wearing a pair of white hospital pants, and a pull at his shirt he saw he was wearing a white hospital t-shirt.
He narrowed his eyes, and forced himself to stand. The pain in his legs was almost unbearable. It felt like this was the first time he had ever even stood. He tried to take a step, but he couldn't balance. A sudden feeling of dizziness became him, and he shut his eyes tight, trying to gain a sense of up and down. He fell. He hit the cold, polished hospital floor with a sharp yelp and a vicious kick of pain.
"What's happened to me?" He growled out quietly, swallowing back vomit from his dizziness. He sat up, against the bed and ran a hand along his head.
He froze.
His antenna had gone. Both hands flew to his head, searching for his precious antenna. Without them, he couldn't balance, he couldn't hear anything or pick up on his surroundings, or even display emotion properly. They were one of the most essential appendices of an irken body. To lose even half of it just one antenna could reduce an irken to the level of a cripple. But, while implants and surgery can repair antenna, one would be severally looked down upon. Something left over from ancient times, some strange idea that no one was sure where it had started, but to lose an antenna was to be greatly shamed.
Zim was panicking now. Things where spinning out of control and he couldn't see any way of getting that control back. He had lost his antenna, and his skin felt strange, and defiantly not irken. His fingers were…human, like his feet, and he had lost his antenna.
The need for a mirror rose again.
Zim decided that if he couldn't walk, then he would crawl across the floor on his hands and knees. It was degrading, but at least he could actually get somewhere. He managed to get to the chair on the other side of the room, despite almost falling on his side once or twice and his body screaming in agonising protest. He pulled himself up and sat, panting. He closed his eyes again as he let the pain of his journey fade from his body.
He opened his weary eyes and looked over at the window on the wall. There was a plant pot on the window ledge. Zim remembered its name began with a D or something.
It was a simple thing, with a short stem, two leaves and a yellow flower head that looked out of the window. Zim suddenly spotted that the flower had a reflection and his eyes widened. He could use the window to look at himself!
This realisation fuelled Zim to get up from the chair. But he had forgotten that he couldn't walk, and so he stumbled quickly into the wall. He leaned heavily against it and drunkenly made his way towards the window. He thanked his luck that he was now tall enough to look out of it.
He reached the window ledge, and grabbed it with one hand. He was panting heavily, hunched over. His legs, arms and body were still screaming in pain. It was like he had never used them before. Like these were the first steps he had ever made, the first breaths, the first time he had ever grabbed something with his arm.
Zim took a long, deep breath and studied himself, raising himself achingly upright.
Surly, whatever had happened to him, couldn't be so bad.
He was wrong. So very wrong. Everything around him faded away, there was only him and his reflection and the plant. He saw his eyes widen. His reddish-brown human eyes look at him. His human nose. His human ears. He had no hair on his head, no eyebrows, but no antenna. He watched his jaw drop in silent horror and he looked at his human teeth. His thin face, ghostly reminiscent of the one he used to see in the mirror only yesterday.
For a moment, there was no pain. He felt like he was floating on nothing. Then, the world came back, as did the pain. And the sickness. He threw up onto the floor. And fell backwards. He scurried away from the window, not wanting look at himself anymore. He closed his eyes tight and shielded his eyes with his arms, but he could still see that...human staring back at him. That wasn't him, that couldn't be him, it was impossible.
Zim couldn't stop himself shaking violently. He knew he was going into shock. He could hear himself screaming, but he wasn't sure if he really was.
There was an echo of a door opening, then someone calling his name.
Then it didn't hurt anymore.
Then he drifted into unconsciousness as his body and mind shut down.
The forces of Sid are gathering.
Chapters are being forged in the fires Zeetha, the personal laptop of the fallen king.
Clouds of uploading are gathering upon the horizon.
PREPARE FOR PURGATORY.