Invader Sideos can do many amazing things, but he says this instead: I keep taking bits of this story, editing out the IZness, and sending them to my friends who ask about what I'm writing. They think I'm superb...yay. More confidence for me. After this is finished, I may go back though it and change it so its all totally original and not a fan-fic, then I could post it on fiction press...see if it really can hold its own.

And I could add it to a much needed portfolio for uni...

I think I'm taking Zim a bit too far out of character, I'm trying to make him hate himself for this feeling and the like while also hating Lilith for making him feel that way WHILE ALSO making him want her. It's hard job really.

He's also much more of a thinker, I dunno why. The underlining of this story is not really drugs; it's a question of nurture vs. nature. Zims been taught all his life how to think, act etc, etc. The drug has simply opened the internal door to his natural Irken instincts.

60's consciousness expansion and all that malarkey.

Bah. Look at this in two ways. One a story about drug addiction on repressed feelings, or two, a story about philosophises, freedom and seeing things in a new light.

I just found out that Glen Danzig (former front man of The Misfits) has his own comic publishing company. I now know where I'm gonna launch my war-at-Vasquez from. And if I do get a job there, I can brag to my friend who's OBSESSED with the Misfits. He's even gonna buy us tickets to go see em.

Man I'm tired. And I've got a headache. Anyway, I think I'm just gonna crush some ideas together for this; I wanna hurry this story along before I get so tired of it that I explode.

Oh, and just in-case you don't get the first few paragraphs, time has advanced by two weeks.

Written to Iggy Pop - 1969, 1970 and (most importantly) Be Your Dog.

I not own Zim...Not me...nope.

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"Can you hurry up, earth-worm?"

"Shut up, Zim, this is a careful process."

"You humans are all so slow" Zim huffed, standing behind Shawn, who was hurriedly typing away on his laptop.

Outside the Thunders hotel, Christmas Eve was drawing to an end and every kid in the country was sleeping soundly, waiting for the next day when they could rush downstairs and open their presents. The night poured down with snow, worse now then all month. For the last two weeks it had snowed, almost a blizzard, non-stop. The city had to shut down some of the roads because of such a heavy downfall. Zim had even seen a news report about it being one of the worst in America's recorded history and some scientist types blaming global warming for it.

He had spent a moment laughing at the human's stupidity at causing their own planet to actually start destroying itself.

Zim looked at the dirty clock on the kitchen wall as it struck ten, before rolling his eyes and giving his arms a scratch. He seemed to be having a lucky night; the withdrawal was not that strong. Only a slight nausea, itching and shaking in his hands. His hands hadn't really stopped shaking for a week, but he brushed it off as just the cold air. The only thing that was really annoying him was the way his left arm wouldn't stop aching. He looked at it and gave it slow rub, being careful not to move the tight bandage too much.

Shawn had been trying to get a program working on his laptop, which he carried with him everywhere in his haggard backpack. This program would allow him and Zim to watch TV through the computer. Of course, they weren't going to pay for it, which was why it was taking so long. Shawn had been at it for almost half an hour now. A constant sound of tapping came from the keyboard and he leaned right over it, the screen reflecting in his large, geekish glasses.

Zim sighed and rolled his eyes. For no real reason he began to walk around the filthy room, kicking various poop cola cans and throwing the odd piece of rubbish into the rubbish pile in the far corner of the kitchen.

He and Shawn where the only ones in the den at the moment. Zim had spent the day walking around with him stealing tiny bits of food and generally not being very nice people.

Zim would have spent the day following Lilith around, but she had left in the morning before he had even come out of his drug educed dreaming.

He turned and cast an unnoticed glare at the young teenager. Shawn was not like the others, he was much too like Dib for Zim's tastes. He had been the only one to really notice Zim's lack of hair, which, taking advantage of Lilith's idea, he had explained as a new haircut. He seemed to accept the explanations, but Zim still noticed that the human sometimes gave him an odd glance, like he knew that Zim wasn't telling the truth.

Zim smirked and turned back to his trash kicking. Shawn's biggest flaw was that, unlike Dib, he lacked the backbone to prove anything. Zim was safe as long as the others continued to believe everything he told them.

He sat down on his mattress, leaning against the wall, and let his thoughts drift onto the human female for what seemed to be the millionth time that day. He scowled at himself; this crush thing was really annoying. It caused his every stray thought to be of that damn girl. Immediately he tried to forcibly switch his thoughts to something else, anything else.

His eyes locked on the laptop and he irritably stated "is it working yet?"

Shawn leaned in just a bit closer and typed just slightly faster. Suddenly he leaned right back and smashed his finger on the enter key, whipping his wrist back as he did so.

He smiled and turned to Zim. "Now it is." He leaned back and cracked his knuckles behind his head. "Damn I'm good," he laughed.

Zim got up and walked to stand behind him, crossing his arms tightly as he did so. He was getting goosebumps and shivers again.

The laptop flicked onto a small screen with some large woman in a pink suit saying something, but there was no sound. Zim raised an antenna to Shawn who saw this and replied by smacking the side of the laptop. This seemed to fix the problem.

"-jor problem in today's society. The number of addicts has soared as aswermitus has flooded into this country, as it has done across the world. I think the major problem we have is that the equipment we use to detect the substance simply isn't working. And also, the Quetina plant from which the drug is extracted, can be grown in your everyday greenhouse. These problems are the ones our government should be combating the most."

Zim snorted and began pacing again, hugging himself tighter. Shawn looked up for a second then went back to his show. Zim listened from his mattress as the shivers began to properly kick in.

He closed his eyes as the voice changed to a man's. "The government needs to put more money into the drug control programs, border controls and narcotic agencies, however seemingly all of the budget has gone towards either the military or building the presidents new super ranch in Texas."

Zim heard Shawn tut. "Why did we vote that idiot in?"

Zim answered him bitterly. "Because you have a useless and pointless democratic system. And you're all stu-pid."

Shawn turned to look at Zim, then looked back to his computer and turned down the volume as he talked. "Are you sure you're not from somewhere in the USSR?"

"No," Zim gritted out. His claws were digging into his arms as he desperately tried to hold himself together.

Shawn either didn't notice or didn't care and he continued with his questions, which where greatly annoying Zim. "No you're not sure, or no you're not from the USSR?"

Zim snapped "NO I'M NOT FROM THE USSR! NOW WILL YOU SHUT YOUR PATHETIC MOUTH FOR ONCE!"

Shawn automatically recoiled and curled up into a ball, backing against the kitchen counter. Zim smiled almost sadistically as he heard the boy whimper. He knew that the human had suffered harshly at the hands of his parental unit and still showed the psychological scars. Which is why it was always that much more fun when Zim lashed out at him.

As the shakes began to fade Zim began to pull himself back up onto his feet. Shawn just reached forward and took his laptop, pulling it closer to him and turning up the volume again so it became a filling background noise for Zim.

Zim snorted at the human's mouse-like behaviour and decided to talk a walk around the hotel. He always preferred his own company anyway. Zim walked out the door of the flat and began slowly pacing the floor, looking into each room as he passed.

The hallway was filthy; graffiti and rubbish everywhere. Zim had to step carefully so as to not walk on rat droppings or broken glass. He looked to his left and at the graffiti, reading it where it was readable.

"Plague," he said quietly as he read the sprayed inscription. "Junkie skum, addict whore, Z?" Zim stopped at the last one, staring at it for a moment before continuing. Most of them were pictures, badly drawn ones but still identifiable. A knife with blood dripping down, some capped human with a gun, a rat with a beret and an AK-47, even a rather odd circle crossed with a large V. The images were everywhere on the dark and mostly wrecked walls. Then, as Zim got to the end of the corridor where a still intact window overlooked the alleyway entrance, he spotted one that was painted over a door. It was a huge A with a needle passing though it.

Zim immediately bit down on his lip and dug his claws into the palms of his hands. His addiction was calling again, roaring within him. He closed his eyes tightly and a soft, but growing, growl came from within him. He fists where shaking with hunger, an internal screaming that could only be silenced by one thing. His hand automatically flew to the top of his left arm and his claw closed tightly around it. He could suddenly taste something in his mouth, blood. He had bitten down so hard that it had begun bleeding.

He raised his free fist and roared at nothing, just letting this feeling of unsurpassed hunger explode out of him. He opened his eyes; a strange dullness resided within them. He suddenly wanted to destroy the first thing he saw.

And he could see the A sign. He roared again and raised a boot up then, smashing it against the sign and felling the door in a swift but powerful kick.

Zim hadn't exactly planned for the door to do that, and so consequently almost fell as he stumbled forward into the room.

He quickly put a hand against the wall and steadied himself; he also coughed as a mass of dust exploded in the stale air around him. He looked around and felt his optic implants shift to accommodate the darkness. As he looked a few rats darted in between the broken floorboards and the large cracks in the walls.

The room was totally dark, as all the windows were boarded up. It looked mostly like the drug den, but without the rubbish. The wallpaper was a sick yellow and most it was peeling from the walls. He walked in and saw that a few items had been left behind by the humans that had once occupied the hotel. A toaster, a chair, even a small one eyed doll. Zim kicked it and watched as it bounced off a door that was open slightly.

Curiosity took hold and he walked towards the dark and dirty door. He slowly pushed it open and peered inside.

At first he could see nothing, nothing of any real interest anyway, and then he spotted it. A once boarded but now broken window cast a pool of light onto a large white bed in the middle of the room. Zim slowly approached it, stepping over the array of broken rubbish and broken floorboards until he stood at its side.

He stared at it for a moment before giving it a curious poke, and he was pleasantly surprised to find the bed was still in rather good shape.

Slowly he sat down upon it, further testing in case the poke had missed anything.

The bed was soft and comfortable, much better then the hard springy mattresses he had been putting up with. He let himself fall back onto it, revelling in the comfortable textures of the bed. He hadn't lain down on anything this soft in a long time.

Zim stayed like that for a moment, simply enjoying the peace and quiet, even the hunger within him for another hit seemed to momentarily die down.

Then a scuttling from some nearby vermin brought him out of his space-out and he grudgingly got up from the bed. The calling within him was returning with gusto, and so he decided he might as well go back to the den to see if anyone else had arrived.

As he walked out the room he didn't bother shutting the door, for some odd reason he was sure he'd be using it later that night, he chuckled slightly, probably to be crashing on it.

--

Outside, the wind howled. The snow had turned into a blizzard; a news report from Shawn's computer had told them that no one should be venturing outside this late at night. Though no one had shown it, the addicts had all felt a pang of worry. Even Zim had felt a jolt of fear as the report came in. If the blizzard was that bad then Vega may not make it, and that was unthinkable. A night without a hit would be truly unliveable, and every junkie in the room knew it.

Zim looked to the clock, it was nearing half past eleven, Vega always came at twelve. That was one thing about him; he was an extremely punctual human and always did everything like clockwork. Sometimes he would arrive earlier and talk to them for a while, sometimes not, but he always came in with a delivery by twelve. Zim scowled as the thought of the human came to his mind. He hated Vega and Vega hated him. They had each made it perfectly clear in the way they talked, or rather spat, at each other and the way they would glare at each other. But Zim knew that no matter how much he disliked the overweight human he would have to put up with him for his fix, and he suspected Vega only put up with Zim for his money.

Zim turned to his left, where, to his great annoyance, sat Lilith. She had been talking non-stop for some time about something or other, while every now and then Zim said something like "yea," or "really?" in order to keep up the idea that he was actually listening to anything she was saying.

This was always the deal at this time of night. Zim hated it, he hated the fact that he actually missed Lilith when she wasn't around, but when she was, all he wanted was for her to vanish off the face of the planet.

Zim suddenly noticed something; Lilith had stopped talking to him. He turned and noticed that she was now arguing with Iggy, who was sitting sideways on the worn-out leather chair.

He was shaking his head and had a small grin on his face. "People are not addicted to oxygen, you can't be addicted to something you need to survive."

Lilith frowned. "What's the definition of an addict? Someone who needs something constantly to survive, right? So if you need oxygen to survive, obviously we're addicted to it."

Iggy massaged his temple in annoyance. "Yes but you can't quit breathing air, you don't get any withdrawal if you don't breathe air."

Lilith chucked in a now-it-all way, "Sure you do, it's called death."

Iggy looked like he was about to bang his head on a wall. "Look, breathing is not an addiction, all things have to breath, so it can't be an addiction if every being on earth does it, can it?"

Lilith never seemed to be short of answers, that or she really wanted the last word. "So if everyone of the planet got spiked every night, would they all be addicts, or would it not count?"

Shawn seemed taken back slightly, "Well...err, no. They'd just be...constant users...I think."

She seemed to take this as a victory. "HA! I knew it! Were not addicted to breathing, were just constant users."

Zim suddenly laughed harshly, causing the attention of the arguing humans to shift to him. He stopped when he noticed their looks and he grinned slyly. "I can quit oxygen. I don't need it to survive."

Both humans laughed and Lilith said, "Oh yea? I'd like to see you do that."

Zim folded his arms, "Watch me," At the same time he noticed that Shawn was also watching him with quiet interest.

Zim took a breath and closed his eyes while also shutting his mouth tightly. Inside he was laughing, he didn't actually need oxygen to live, he only needed nitrogen, which was easily supplied though his PAK filters.

He opened one eye to see the reactions on the faces of Iggy and Lilith, a tiny, annoying, part of him wondered if he impressed her. Iggy was slowly smiling more and more, but Lilith was slowly looking more and more concerned.

A silence fell on the room and all attention turned to Zim, who had, seemingly, been holding his breath for over four minutes.

Lilith suddenly broke the silence, she sounded worried, "Ok, Zim, stop it."

Zim smiled, but refused to open his mouth. Not only was he enjoying being the centre of attention, he has worrying the girl, an added bonus.

Lilith pushed his shoulder. "Come on, Zim, this isn't funny anymore."

Zim smiled wider and closed his eye, he even began humming. He was clearing enjoying torturing his audience.

Lilith was now clearly panicking; even Iggy had lost his smile. Lilith grabbed Zim's shoulder and shook him. "Zim, stop it you'll kill yourself."

Iggy quickly followed on, "Come on, man. Quit it."

Shawn stayed silent, and only observed the scene from a distance. Zim just hummed louder, if he could have laughed, he would have. So far he had clocked up almost seven minuets.

Then, suddenly, Lilith slapped him. The sharp pain and shock caused Zim to shout out loudly, which caused Shawn to jump where he sat.

He placed a claw over his cheek and glared at the girl, who was glaring back just as hard. "What did you do that for, stink-beast? I was proving a point."

"You were gonna kill yourself!" Lilith waved one hand in the air to emphasise her point. "Christ's sake Zim! Your lungs were about to collapse!"

Zim growled angrily. "Zim could have held his breath for much longer."

Iggy leaned forward with interest and quietly said "how'd you do that?"

Zim turned and watched Shawn raise his eyebrow in interest. He sighed. "Martial arts training, master control of your body." Zim had read that on an advertisement a week ago, it often served as a useful answer for many of Shawn's questions.

Iggy nodded. "Right, right, that Irr-ken fighting style you told us about." He furrowed his brow. "Where did you learn that again?"

Zim looked down at his feet. "It's only taught where I'm from. It's a very exclusive fighting technique." This was true. Only Irkens were allowed to learn it and only the elites could learn its full secrets. Even then there were things held back for the personal safety of the Irken people.

Lilith huffed and sat back from where she had been glaring at Zim. "I don't care if it was some kung-fu shit. It wasn't funny, Zim, you had us scared."

Zim grinned wickedly. "I know."

Iggy laughed despite the glare Lilith gave him, and even Shawn chuckled.

Something inside Zim warmed up, Lilith had actually been concerned for him. He felt a tingle of joy run along his spine and he shuffled slightly where he was sitting. Immediately however his other side, the Irken elite side, told him that it was a wrong feeling. It told him that he should do all he could to ignore and stop it. But another side, a side that Zim had only become aware of since he started his habit, told him to embrace the feeling. Allow it to flow right though him, to give in to it, to admit to it.

Zim once again felt torn. He knew he should hate the feeling, he should get rid of it, and that's what he had been doing for most of the time.

However, more and more he had found himself wanting to feel it. It felt so...natural.

He narrowed his eyes and kept his vision fixed on the floor. All his life he, like any other Irken, had been taught that nature was a bad thing.

That the Irken race had evolved above primal and backward ideals like individuality, compassion, love. There was only ever the collective importance of the Irken people, the greater good. They were the perfect race; Ruthless, powerful, unforgiving and fearless. They were told to be like the machine, to work tirelessly for the better of their masters. To never question, never think for one's self unless absolutely necessary. To follow orders to the letter, to gain power and glory for the Irken race by any means. Even the smallest Irken was expected to do its duty to the Empire, even if they were as small as Zim used to be.

"One empire, one mind. The Tallest expect every Irken to do as they are told." He quietly muttered the words that had been drilled into him since birth.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. Even Zim snapped out of his intense musing.

Zim's veins screamed in hunger as a deep voice floated through the door and into the warm room. "Hey, it's Santa. And I've brought some liquid pure presents for all."

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Humm...things where meant to happen in this chapter that obviously didn't. It just started getting REALLY long and so I decided to move all the exciting stuff to the next chapter.

Yup.

Exciting INDEED...

Anyway. Err, comments on this chapter. Well, Shawn seems to have evolved slightly as a character. He's much more of a Dib-replacement now, but this was obviously coming from the comments he made in the second chapter.

I'm still unsure whether I like how Lilith is turning out...its kinda, so-so I suppose. It's kinda annoying that I have to always focus on Zim because I would like to get inside some of the other characters heads and develop 'em more.

Iggy was considerably more involved here. Again, I dunno about his character, he's sorta representative of a rocker-type person. Drugs are cool kinda stuff. Lilith was meant to be like that as well...but she's more of a rich kid trying to rebel against neglectful parents.

Too bad she chose to do this particular drug eh?

I really like Zim's thoughts in this. It's an insight into how Zim, and the Irken people, think. It's not brainwashing if you're the brainwash-ee!

Actually it's a comment on how people often write that 'Zim is like a machine/Irkens are like machines. No feelings are to be pitied' kinda stuff. Well, what if their taught that the machine is good? That they should aspire to be like their computerised masters. I was also thinking about the cockroach thing in JTHM no7, live only to supply the basics for yourself and nothing more. The Irkens are probably taught the same but to supply the Empire and nothing more.

The USSR comment thing is a good observation on how much it shows in Zim.

I dunno what the breath holding thing is, or where it came from. Same goes for the nitrogen thingy, I just made it up on the spot. The 'oxygen addiction' was thought up on a coach ride to a very boring uni.

Anyway, a very philosophical chapter, if I do say so myself.

R&R your thoughts to me! I like thoughts...yummy.

Oh, and sorry this took so long. But ya know…education facilities…nuff said. Expect other chapters to take, hopefully less, time to get here.