A/N: New story brought to you by request by The Cowardly Christian, from a plot outline by him based on a prompt from me. As is always the case with such stories, do be aware that it'll be more mature in regards to content than I normally do, though I think this one is fairly mild compared to past ones. Also, as another reminder, since these stories are always harsh on Gaz, remember to think of her as the one-dimensional TV version of her in the black dress rather than the more nuanced version in the blue/green shirt from the movie and comics.
Anyway, I think that's all that's needed to be said. Read on!
Disclaimer: I wish that I owned Invader Zim and all related characters, but I don't.
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Monkey's Paw of Doom
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Gaz Membrane was in a bad mood, a statement that would invite either panicked screams or snarky comments about that being her normal state, depending on who heard it.
That being said, one may ask why the purple-haired teen was in such a bad mood, when she had so much going for her. After all, she'd recently turned 18, so she had full access to her considerable trust fund to keep herself independently afloat for the foreseeable future. She was entering her final year of Hi Skool, which admittedly meant a lot of intense testing coming up, but it also meant that in a relatively short time she'd be free of those hallways of never-ending stupidity. And speaking of being free of stupidity, Dib was gearing up to move out and start college out of town, so soon she wouldn't have to interact with his big head except on holidays.
So, with all of that in mind, Gaz should have been in an unprecedented good mood these days. But she wasn't, because a prize had been unfairly snatched away from her. Specifically, the new Game Slave Infinity Box VR 360-X, which she'd been waiting over two years for the release of, had been pushed back due to technical problems. And according to current estimates by industry professionals, it would now probably take another four years before it finally came out.
"Such bullshit," Gaz grumbled as she lay sulking on her bed. She wanted the Infinity Box, she'd waited for it, and now she had to wait even longer? How dare those corporate assholes delay her from getting what she wanted?! She should go down to their headquarters and beat all their heads in until they did what she wanted!
Unfortunately for her, Gaz knew that she couldn't do that. Even with her short temper, she knew that there were some rare situations where violence wasn't going to get her the result she wanted. After all, if she did go after those people like that, it would just delay production even more, and meanwhile they'd probably waste her time with lawsuits like a bunch of whiners. So, there was nothing she could do but sit there in quiet solitude and complain about unfair life was.
THUD
Or it would be quiet solitude, if not for the sounds of large objects banging around in the hallway suddenly intruding into her thought processes. Eye twitching in annoyance, Gaz got up and stomped over to her door, flinging it open to reveal Dib standing in the hall, struggling to balance several large cardboard boxes piled in his arms; judging by the fact that several more were on the floor, he'd clearly overburdened himself.
"Would you keep it down out here, you idiot?" she growled at him.
"Sorry Gaz," Dib replied, readjusting his stack of boxes, "I've been organizing all my stuff for what I'm taking with me when I move out, and moving everything I'm not into secure storage, and I guess there was more of that than I was expecting-"
"I don't care what you do with all your junk, just do it quietly," she snapped with a glare.
"Hey, it's not junk, I've got a lot of important paranormal artifacts in here," Dib protested, causing Gaz to roll her eyes.
"Well, if they're so important, why not take them with you?" she scoffed, not really interested but figuring she could have some fun at his expense by poking holes in Dib's logic.
"There's not going to be any room for it in my dorm, especially with all the surveillance equipment I'm going to have set up to keep an eye on Zim and Tak while I'm gone," Dib explained with a frown, "I just know they'll try something while I'm out of town, and I have to be prepared to return at a moment's notice!"
"Oh please, Zim hasn't come up with even a half-decent plan in years, and Tak keeps saying she's willing to just wait for humanity to blow itself up before she tries to take over," Gaz said with another eyeroll, "At this point, you're just wasting your time, but I know you're too stubborn to listen to common sense, so go ahead and keep obsessing if you want."
Dib frowned at her mockery, but knowing better than to argue his viewpoint when it came to her, he just sighed and shook his head.
"Look, I don't want to fight about this, so just forget it," he said, readjusting his pile of boxes again, "Can you grab those boxes I dropped? I know you're not going to actually carry them, but can you at least stack them so I can grab them more easily after I come back from getting this bunch to my car?"
"Fine, whatever," Gaz grunted, not interested in continuing this conversation a moment longer than necessary. Taking that as a win, Dib walked off with his stack of boxes; once he was out of sight, Gaz huffed and half-heartedly shoved the dropped boxes around with her foot to make a loose pile. As she did so, she noticed one of them had opened when it had fallen and partially spilled its contents on the floor. Groaning in annoyance, she reached down to start pushing everything back in, only to pause as one item in particular caught her attention.
"The hell is this thing?" she muttered, picking up what looked like a severed hand. Not a human one, admittedly, as it was too small for that and covered in fur, but pretty close, so probably from another primate. It was leathery from apparent mummification, and its thumb was curled inwards while its other four fingers were stiffened straight outwards.
Examining it carefully, Gaz found there was a card hanging from the stump of the hand's wrist. Grabbing it, she saw written on it in Dib's handwriting a short paragraph, "Mystical monkey's paw. Grants one wish without limitations per finger, which reset after the paw is passed along to a new owner. Do not use unless desperate, and word wishes carefully, as they have a tendency to be twisted into backfiring."
"Huh, that's actually halfway interesting. Guess he was never desperate enough to try using this thing against Zim," she mused. Shrugging, she was going to place the paw back in its box, when an idea suddenly came to her. Humming in thought, she pocketed the paw and closed its box back up, then stacked it with the others, leaving them all in the hallway for Dib and retreating back into her room. Once the door was shut behind her, she pulled the paw back out and gave it another close examination.
"Hmm, wishes without limitations, huh? I could use that," she muttered thoughtfully, a grin forming as she remembered her earlier complaining and quickly settled on what she wanted, "Okay then, magic paw, I wish that the Game Slave Infinity Box VR 360-X would be completed and available for me to purchase within the next several days."
As soon as Gaz was done speaking, the paw started faintly glowing, before its smallest finger slowly curled in towards its palm with the sound of creaking leather from the movement of its dried out skin. Once the finger was done moving, the glowing stopped, and Gaz was left staring at the paw for several moments. However, just when she was starting to get annoyed at the lack of flashier results, an alert went off on her phone; grunting at the distraction, she grabbed it and tapped the alert after seeing it was from her dad's personal news app, bringing up the video.
"Greetings, people of the world!" Professor Membrane addressed the camera, sitting behind his office desk, "I know it's been nearly a week since my last world-changing scientific breakthrough, and that you must all therefore have been quite worried, but have no fear! That is simply because my focus on been on researching something even greater than my usual efforts, and I can now present my results. I have discovered a new form of isotope, that when properly harnessed can generate clean energy at a greater rate than even my old PEG was capable of. With this now at our disposal, by the end of the week we estimate that we'll have advanced human society and technology by centuries!"
The video continued for several more minutes, but Gaz tuned it out as she processed what seemed to her to be the most relevant part – technology advancing that fast surely meant that whatever technical problems were holding back the Infinity Box's development would be fixed in short order.
"Sweet. This ugly thing just might be worth keeping around after all," she said, grinning at the paw in her hand.
Though as she did, she should have remembered the attached warning about wishes backfiring…
XXXXXXX
True to the Professor's word, by the end of the week, use of his new Membranium isotope had rapidly advanced technology across Earth. Decrepit cities were quickly being built up into glistening, prosperous metropolises, food production and pollution cleanup were faster than ever, new medicines were being created practically every hour, and all the trains were even running on time. It was clearly the dawn of a new utopia.
Not that Gaz cared about any of that, of course. All that mattered to her was that Game Slave Incorporated had indeed capitalized on the new advances in technology to speed up development of the Infinity Box. And as a result, she was now gazing upon her new state of the art gaming system, hooked up to the computers on her desk and ready for her to break it in, which she was preparing to do. She'd surrounded her gaming station with piles of snacks and sodas, she'd cleared her schedule for the next several days, and she'd practically barricaded her bedroom door shut to make sure that no one could barge in and interrupt her as she undertook what was meant to be the ultimate gaming experience.
"Oh yeah, this is gonna be good. And it's all thanks to you," Gaz said with a grin, looking to the monkey's paw lying on her desk next to the console, "Hmm, maybe next I should wish to own Bloaty's? Nah, running a company's too difficult, maybe I should just wish for free pizza for life? Whatever, I'll figure that out later."
Putting it out of mind for now, Gaz settled into her desk chair, getting into just the right position to be both comfortable yet also fully alert for the game. She then slipped on the VR helmet and gloves and, stretching out any remaining tension from her body, hit the Infinity Box's power button.
ZAP
At which point the entire setup lit up with a power surge, more electricity than a thunderstorm running through it uncontrolled. Gaz didn't even have a moment to notice this before the surge hit her, practically illuminating her skeleton like in a cartoon and causing her body to jolt and bounce around in her chair.
BOOM
And then the console and everything connected to it outright exploded, sending Gaz flying to slam against the wall before flopping to the floor. Barely conscious, she lay there groaning, oblivious to nearly all her gaming equipment melting into slag, or to the VR helmet falling off her head and taking most of her burnt hair with it. And laying there in such a state, she had no way of noticing all the sounds of explosions and screams echoing from outside the house, as the power surge spread everywhere.
And all the while, the monkey's paw sat undamaged on the desk, its remaining fingers almost seeming to point mockingly at Gaz's slumped form.
XXXXXXX
It was the greatest disaster and resulting scandal in modern history. In an utterly unthinkable act, Professor Membrane had actually made a mistake in his calculations, somehow forgetting to carry a one. This had created a cascading error in the formula for harnessing and processing the Membranium-created energy, leaving the various reactors that had been rapidly built to do just that improperly formatted. As such, a critical limit had been placed on power levels without anyone being aware of it, catching all the technicians and engineers operating the reactors unprepared when that limit was hit, resulting in a worldwide overload that had quickly taken down the entire new power system and everything connected to it.
Overnight, the brand new golden age of technological advancement had collapsed, reducing everything to… well, not a dark age. In fact, things were barely below what they had been before the discovery of Membranium. But after having been briefly granted such a high, all anyone cared about now was not having access to it – and more importantly, who to blame for that loss, as well as all the damage caused by the destruction of the power system.
Since it was without any doubt the Professor's fault, he was held solely responsible for the entire fiasco. Almost as soon as anyone could grasp what had happened, the public's general anger had focused squarely on Membrane, and his life fell apart – not only was he swiftly arrested for criminal negligence, but he was soon buried under government and civil lawsuits for all the injuries and property damage caused by the disaster. So on top of his reputation being ruined, his company was soon bankrupted out of existence, and his assets were all seized to pay off his new debts.
And unfortunately for Dib and Gaz, their father's assets included their house, and thanks to some probably less than legal loopholing by the government's lawyers, their trust funds were also seized, on the grounds that the Professor had been the one to raise all that money in the first place. So, between what they had in their own bank accounts – which wasn't much, due to being more focused on paranormal investigations and gaming than getting jobs at any point – and the fact that the college Dib had been planning to attend being shut down indefinitely due to damage from the disaster, the siblings were left living together in the cheapest house they could rent, which frankly was so rundown that it wouldn't surprise either of them if they found out that the only prior inhabitants were serial killers who liked to paint their basement walls with their victims' blood.
"This sucks on so many levels," Gaz grumbled, sitting on the bare mattress that now served as her bed in the cramped, filthy room she now had to live in. What few of her possessions had survived the Membranium overload and hadn't been taken as collateral during the house seizure were piled up in the small space. This thankfully included her older model Game Slave, so she at least had that to keep her from going crazy with boredom, but more importantly she also still had the monkey's paw.
Now, most people would likely have drawn the connection between their prior use of the paw and the massive disaster that had followed it. However, Gaz was far too stubborn to admit that she could have made a mistake, and was frankly desperate to escape these new terrible circumstances. So, she had kept ahold it of it despite the sudden upheaval in her life, and was now considering how to use it to fix said life.
"Tempting to ask for my hair back, but that seems like a waste," she muttered with a grimace, running a hand over her bare scalp; with most of her hair burned off by the power surge, she decided to shave off the remaining scraps to at least keep things even. Obviously, she could make it look good (not that she cared about her looks, of course), but it was pretty damn annoying, and a part of her really wanted to wish herself fixed, but she wasn't going to just toss aside a wish on something that small, not when there were bigger fish to fry.
"Okay, you little bastard, let's try this again," she said as she picked up the paw, carefully considering what she was going to ask for, "I wish for a new home to live in, that those government assholes or whining civilians can't take away from me."
Once again the paw lightly glowed, its ring finger curling up to join the little finger against the palm. Gaz had hoped this would result in an instant change like last time and immediately find herself in a new home, and scowled when nothing seemed to happen. However, before she could really get worked up about it, a firm knocking echoed throughout the house as something pounded on the front door. Arching an eyebrow, Gaz dropped the paw onto the mattress and made her way to the front of the house, watching as Dib exited the tiny kitchen he'd been cooking up some cheap ramen in to answer the door. To their surprise, this revealed a large boxy robot drone hovering right outside, a limb still extended from knocking on the door.
"Congratulations, Mr. and/or Mrs. [Your Name Here]!" the drone greeted in a monotone yet somehow chipper voice, "You have been randomly selected by the Housing Lottery for Persons Displaced by the Disaster to receive a new mansion! Please report to the enclosed address within the next week to accept ownership or it will be passed along to someone else!"
With that, the drone extended another limb, handing the bewildered Dib an envelope, before spraying him with confetti and then flying off down the street.
"A mansion? Sweet," Gaz said, taking the envelope from Dib and examining the paper inside it, which had an address on it in flashy print. Dib, meanwhile, was staring suspiciously in the direction that the drone had disappeared in.
"Housing lottery? I haven't heard anything about that," he muttered, "And just handing out a mansion? That doesn't make any sense, this has to be some kind of trick, maybe even some new plan of Zim's!"
"If it was Zim, he wouldn't have used a drone, he'd just have GIR come over here in a lousy costume," Gaz replied with an eyeroll. She was tempted to tell him about her use of the paw just to shut him up, but realized that would just send him on a whole other rant about "proper use" of magical artifacts, so she decided against it. Instead, she just shoved him aside and walked out the door, leaving him looking after her in confusion.
"Wait a minute, where are you going?" he asked incredulously, "You can't actually be buying this? Even if it's not Zim, it's got to be some kind of scam!"
"If you want to stay in this flophouse, go ahead, but I'll take my chances on upgrading," she replied dryly, only to tense as Dib suddenly grabbed her arm.
"No way, I'm not letting you do this, it-"
BAM
Dib was cut off as Gaz's fist slammed into his face, sending him flying to smash into the far wall of the living room. She watched him slump into an unconscious heap on the floor, then grunted and left, shutting the door behind her.
An hour later, Gaz found herself outside the address that had been on the invitation. It looked like an abandoned hardware store had been shoddily converted into a real estate office, with a sign reading "Housing Lottery Authority" plastered into one window. That was, admittedly, a bit strange, but hardly a lone standout – a lot of smaller businesses had collapsed following the Membranium disaster, so she supposed it made sense that new ones would be quick to take advantage of the newly-available office space. Still, she kept her guard up as she entered, even as she reminded herself that her wish meant that this was all supposed to work out for her.
Entering the office, Gaz was greeted by the sight of several desks filling the space, a half-dozen men and women seated at them filling out paperwork. Most of them paused and looked up at her as she entered, then returned to their work, except for one older guy wearing a badge that read "Manager", who approached her with a used car salesman-brand smile.
"Hello miss, how can we help you?" he asked, oozing sleazy charm. In response, Gaz shoved the invitation into his chest.
"Make with the free mansion," she snapped. The manager's plastered smile faltered for a moment, before he straightened it out and examined the paper carefully.
"Ah yes, of course. Please, step into my office so we can get everything sorted and taken care of," he said, walking over to a door in the back of the room and opening it, gesturing for Gaz to enter first. Snorting and rolling her eyes at the faux-chivalry, Gaz walked through the door – and stopped short as she suddenly found herself not in an office, but what appeared to be an empty lot behind the building containing the front office. Well, mostly empty, as there was a ramshackle shed the size of her old home's garage at the rear of the lot, with a sign nailed to the door which read "Your New House".
"What the hell is- OOMPH!" Gaz started to demand and turn around to face the manager, only for a pair of powerful arms to suddenly grab her in a bear hug, while another hand shoved a rag that smelled of chemicals into her face. Caught totally off guard, she was unable to break free before whatever she was breathing in, which quickly went into effect, limbs going leaden and head growing fuzzy. And as her vision started to darken at the corners, she heard the people around her talking.
"I can't believe this worked, that invite totally screamed 'scam'."
"Some people are just desperate for an upgrade, I guess. Or she's just not that bright."
"Never mind all that. Just get her in the shed and set everything up, I'll tell the others to start moving the fake office somewhere else to set up for the next mark while we're handling this one…"
And that was the last thing Gaz heard before she lost consciousness, darkness claiming her.
XXXXXXX
Several hours later, Gaz jerked awake with a gasp, mind fuzzy and frantic, not registering anything aside from being cold, wet, and with an aching pain in her side that was getting sharper by the second. Forcing herself up into a sitting position, she slapped herself in the face several times to rapidly clear her head and looked around to see what was happening, which only left her more confused.
She was sitting in an old-fashioned standing bathtub full of ice, having been stripped down to her underwear, and most disturbingly had a bunch of blood-stained bandages strapped to the right side of her abdomen. The tub was positioned in the middle of what she assumed was the inside of the shed she'd seen, which was illuminated by a bare lightbulb hanging above her, revealing that the shed was currently empty of anything other than the tub and a small writing desk propped next to it, though patterns in the dusty floor suggested other items had been there recently.
Moving stiffly with a pained grunt, Gaz leaned over to examine the desk more closely, seeing that there was a note laying on it. Reading the note, Gaz's eyes widened in shock.
"Enjoy the new house, loser… and thanks for the kidney?!" she yelled as she read the note aloud. And then she was just yelling and screaming in general as the pain of her unwanted surgery finally punched through the ice-induced numbness, leaving her writhing in agony. She fell out of the tub as she flailed about, hitting the floor hard enough to send a shudder through the entirety of the barely-cohesive shed.
CRASH
And then it went from barely-cohesive to not cohesive at all, the entire thing collapsing and leaving the pain-wracked Gaz under a pile of rubble in the otherwise-empty lot behind the office now abandoned by the people who were already on their way to sell her stolen kidney on the black market.
XXXXXXX
Once Gaz eventually managed to limp her way home, Dib had quickly driven her to the hospital (thankfully for both of them, he'd kept his mouth shut about any "I told you so" remarks), where actual doctors had patched up the damage done by the organ thieves. Unfortunately, the resulting medical bills had eaten up most of their remaining funds, so to be able to continue to afford rent for their terrible house, they were going to be cutting back on things like usage of electrical appliances and multiple meals a day for the near future.
With nothing else to keep her distracted from the slowly healing wound in her side, Gaz was currently laying on a rusty foldout chair on the house's overgrown lawn, scowling at the monkey's paw in her lap. She'd considered using it to wish her kidney back, but after what had happened with her last two wishes, she'd probably just end up with it lying loose and useless at her feet, or she'd grow a new one that would turn into a massive tumor or something. So, she'd decided against that, and had in fact ruled out any wishes that would directly affect her; she wasn't going to risk that again.
"But then what the hell am I supposed to do with you?" she muttered, glaring at the paw and swearing it was somehow smirking at her.
"And here I thought your brother was the one who liked talking to himself," a familiar British voice said from nearby. Groaning in annoyance at the intrusion, Gaz looked up to see Tak standing on the sidewalk, smirking at her.
"What the hell do you want?" Gaz snapped.
"Well, I was just out looking for MIMI, as she's having one of her insanity episodes caused by that moronic SIR of Zim's… last time this happened, I found her working as a DJ in a night club," she explained, trailing off into a mutter with a grimace at the memory, before shaking it off to regain her composure, "Anyway, while I passing through this glorified slum, I remembered the two of you were stuck living here since your family's fall from grace, and thought I'd check in to see how miserable you are and mock your suffering."
"I thought Zim was the petty one?" Gaz asked in disbelief, receiving a shrug in response.
"Considering you and your sibling are as responsible as he is for my failures to conquer this planet and restore my proper status, I'll take my victories where I can get them," she said, "Nice new hairdo, by the way. Really fits you – after all, you've always been a lowbrow thug, you may as well look the part."
Gaz growled as she self-consciously rubbed her bald scalp with one hand, the other tightening into a death grip on the paw in her lap.
"I have been having a very bad week. So I suggest you walk away now, before I start ripping your weird alien organs out," she snarled. Tak only laughed at that.
"Oh, you want to be on the giving end of that now, I suppose?" she asked. When Gaz stared at her in surprise, she added, "Ruined reputation or not, your family is still quite famous. When something like that happens to one of you, it tends to still hit the news. And honestly, walking right into a blatant trap like that? I thought you were one of the rare intelligent humans, but clearly I was wrong."
By this point, Gaz's eye was twitching in rage. Evidently seeing this as a victory, Tak turned with a final laugh and started to walk away, clearly enjoying having the last word. And that smug strut was the last straw for Gaz, who held up the paw and said the first thing that popped into her head.
"I wish someone would take care of her," she hissed, the paw glowing and curling up its middle finger in reaction.
Now, to understand exactly how the resulting enactment of the wish was carried out, a little context is required. Following the Membranium-induced disaster, Zim had ended up holing himself up inside his base, trying desperately to find a way to capitalize on how humanity had been affected by the sudden devastation. Eventually, he'd settled on the idea of setting himself up as Professor Membrane's replacement as humanity's new benefactor, which he'd do by providing them with a means of joy to lift their spirits after all the destruction (much as it made Zim sick to do so). And to do this, he'd turned to the thing that he believed humans found the most happiness in – the moose.
Admittedly, that might have been his own bias in favor of Minimoose talking, but he'd made weirder leaps of logic than this in the past.
In any case, Zim had gathered up a herd of moose in his labs and had spent every waking moment obsessively studying them, in order to determine the best way to market them to the mindless masses as a means of improving their pitiful lives. Somehow, this had led to his current experiment of spinning several of them around in a giant centrifuge in the attic hanger bay for reasons he wasn't entirely sure of himself; however, before he could question his line of thought, GIR suddenly spilled some pudding on the centrifuge's controls, causing the machine to go berserk. It spun at cartoonishly high speeds, ultimately resulting in the straps restraining one of the moose snapping, causing it to go flying. This saw it smashing through the wall of the attic and flying across town, finally hitting the ground just in time to crash right into Tak as she walked away from mocking Gaz, sending her flying in turn into a nearby dumpster, which crumpled from the sheer force.
Gaz, for her part, blinked dumbly as she processed what she'd just seen. As she watched, the seemingly unfazed moose stood up and meandered off, revealing Tak lying unconscious in the ruined dumpster, holographic disguise having deactivated to reveal how badly her body was mangled from the collision. And before Gaz could realize how happy that sight made her, Dib came running out of the house.
"Is everything alright out here? I thought I heard- is that Tak?!" he exclaimed, gaze falling on the horribly injured Irken, "What the hell happened?!"
"A moose came flying out of nowhere and hit her," Gaz explained, and at Dib's incredulous look she shrugged and added, "Yeah, I don't get it either, but it's what I saw."
"Okay… but whatever the case, this is huge! I finally have one of those monsters totally vulnerable!" Dib said happily, pulling out a pair of cuffs from one of his coat pockets and quickly securing Tak's wrists, "Now I just have to get her to my storage locker, it's the only place I still have access to that's secure enough to hold her, then I can start interrogating her once she's regained consciousness… or should I just hand her right over to the Swollen Eyeballs… no, they'd just take all the credit, I have to properly document this…"
Gaz watched as Dib ranted his options to himself while dragging Tak towards where his car was parked, tossing her into the trunk before driving off with her. Once the car was out of sight, it finally fully hit her what had just happened, and she collapsed back into the chair in laughter.
"Oh, that is too good," she said between chuckles, "Not only does that green bitch get what's coming to her for messing with me, but it'll even keep Dib out of my hair… er, it'll keep him from bothering me, for a while."
With that, Gaz got comfortable, content that things were finally going her way… or so she thought.
XXXXXXX
Over the next few days, Dib started spending less and less time at the house, instead focusing his efforts interrogating Tak in his storage locker-turned-holding cell. Or at least, that's what Gaz assumed he was doing, but she didn't particular care enough to ask for clarification.
However, today he didn't come back at all, and while Gaz really didn't care about his well-being, he was supposed to have bought groceries on the way home, and with their funds stretched so thin, there currently wasn't much to eat left on hand. So, with many grumbled complaints and threats, she left the house and made her way to the storage warehouse where Dib had a room long-term rented, figuring that he'd lost track of time and needed some sense knocked back into his big head. Soon reaching the building, and after taking a few minutes to remember where exactly in it that his locker was located from the one time he'd shown it to her in case of an emergency, she found herself outside the large storm shutter-like door, pausing as she vaguely heard indistinct yelling coming from within.
"Is he actually torturing her? Huh, didn't think he had it in him," she said thoughtfully, before shrugging and yanking the door up without knocking or otherwise announcing herself. She was greeted by the sight of a large space probably half the size of their new house, stacked practically floor-to-ceiling with boxes, save for a few square feet in the center, where a mattress had been laid out. Both Tak and Dib were on it, and for a moment Gaz thought he was straddling her to throttle her or something.
Then her brain registered the fact that both of them were naked, and put two and two together, to her immense horror.
"OH FUCK NO!" she screamed, going practically blind from sheer disgust and proceeding to vomit all over the floor, while Dib and Tak both yelped in embarrassed surprise and pulled away from each other.
A few extremely awkward minutes later, after Dib and a heavily-bandaged Tak had pulled their clothes back on and Gaz had regained enough composure to stop heaving, the apparent couple had explained things to her. While Dib was patching up Tak's injuries so she could be coherent enough to be properly interrogated, the two had started talking, and what had started as banter as she did her best to resist his captivity of her in her weakened state had somehow evolved into genuine heart-to-heart talks. They had gotten to really get to know each other over the course of the last few days, finding they had a lot in common regarding their desperate needs for their cultures to respect them while simultaneously hating out they felt like they were constantly surrounded by idiots, among other things. The two had truly bonded, one thing had led to another, and now, well…
"So, yeah, I guess we're together now," Dib said with a blush as he helped Tak change some bandages on her neck, "Though right now I'm focusing on nursing her back to health before we figure out where this goes next."
"This is NOT what I meant when I said 'take care of her'!" Gaz thought angrily, even more disgusted by the pair being affectionate with each other than she had been by walking in on them mid-coitus. Not wanting to hear another word of this hideous conversation, Gaz turned and marched out of the room, soon finding herself outside the warehouse; unfortunately, Dib quickly followed after her.
"Gaz, listen, I know this is a shock, but it's a good thing!" he babbled, "I mean, sure, Tak still wants to conquer Earth, but I'm sure I can change her mind and get her to help us instead! And I don't just mean saving the world from Zim either, I mean she can help us personally, cause you know she's got a lot of money and influence thanks to controlling Deelishus Weenie, and we could really use the help right now…"
"I'm not asking for a damn handout from anyone, least of all the stuck-up alien whore with low enough standards to bang you," Gaz sneered, earning a glare from Dib.
"Don't talk about her like that," he snapped, "And I don't like the idea of immediately asking her money after we just hooked up, but I'm trying to actually take a long-term view of things, and I-"
"God dammit, I wish you'd shut up!" Gaz growled, only to freeze as she suddenly remembered that she still had the monkey's paw stuffed into her pocket. And before she could even think to try and somehow take back what she'd just said, she felt the paw shift, its last finger curling up as it cast Gaz's final wish.
"…" Dib's mouth moved for several moments, not a single sound coming out of it, before he finally caught onto the fact that he wasn't saying anything. Eyes widening in shock, he brought his hands up to feel his throat and mouth, looking for some cause for his muteness, and started flailing about wildly in a panic when he couldn't find one. Watching this, Gaz smirked.
"Well, maybe that wasn't a waste after all," she thought with a cruel chuckle, "And at least there's no possible way this could backfire on me."
Content that things were finally going her way, Gaz left Dib to his silent freak out, walking away and pulling out her Game Slave. As she started to cross the street, she let herself drift into the zone as her focus went almost entirely into the game, with her only other thoughts being on figuring out how to sell the paw for some quick cash from whatever idiots would buy it without a guarantee that it was the real thing.
WHAM
Which was why she never saw it coming when a speeding car came zooming around a corner and shot through a red light, barreling down on Gaz and hitting her before she could react, sending her flying into the air to land with a splat several feet away. Dib, meanwhile, had seen all this unfolding and had tried desperately to warn Gaz, to no avail.
If only he'd been able to speak…
XXXXXXX
The good news was, Gaz survived the collision. The bad news was, her lower spine had been severed, leaving her permanently paralyzed from the waist down.
Understandably, Gaz was infuriated and wanted revenge and/or justice. In some further good news, the police investigating the collision were able to easily track down and arrest the driver, a man with a lengthy history of driving-related felonies. Charges were filed, and soon they were all sitting in court… and that was when things went wrong again. Because as it turned out, due to lingering damage from the Membranium disaster, many of the city's traffic cameras kept glitching out at random times, including the ones observing the area where Gaz was hit. While they were able to confirm the defendant's car had indeed been the one to hit her, they were unable to confirm whether the light he had driven through had been red or not, which the defense lawyer was quick to use to paint the situation as Gaz's own fault for crossing against the light.
"Are you fucking kidding me?!" Gaz screamed from where her wheelchair was positioned at the plaintiff's table, "I'm stuck in this fucking chair for the rest of my life because of this asshole! Who cares if I had the light or not? He should have been watching where he was going!"
"One could say the same for you, Miss Membrane," the blue-haired defense lawyer sneered in his nasally voice, adjusting his glasses as he shot her a smug look, "After all, despite the glitching footage, the camera clearly shows you were more focused on your little gaming device than the basic action of checking before crossing the street. I state that my client was perfectly obedient of traffic laws, and that it was your own flagrant disregard for your own safety that led to this outcome. Shame on you for trying to slander this man's good name to cover your own actions!"
"That is bullshit!" Gaz snarled, while the jury and audience muttered to themselves, until the judge banged his gavel.
"Order in the court!" he declared, and once the room quieted down he continued, "Given the defendant's extensive history of similar offenses, I am inclined to believe the plaintiff's version of events. However, the defense has raised a fair amount of reasonable doubt not only of his guilt, but also of the plaintiff's own credibility. As such, I must ask if there were any eyewitnesses present on the day in question, who are present in court today and willing to testify? If so, now is the time to speak up."
Seated in the front row of the audience, Dib's eyes widened, and he raised both arms, waving them around to try and catch the judge's attention. Unfortunately, before the judge could take notice of him, the bailiff walked over and smacked his arms down.
"Knock that off, this is serious business, no time to be making a scene like a little kid!" he snapped, while the judge looked around at the room almost in desperation.
"I mean it, literally anyone could speak up in defense of the plaintiff's version of events, and I will rule in her favor right now, the defendant's record is THAT bad," he practically pleaded, "Heck, it could be some total nutjob with a hideously deformed head who believes in aliens and Bigfoot, and I would take their word for it. As long as someone, anyone, speaks up for her right now, she'll win this case. If not, I'll have no choice but to rule against her."
By now quite frantic, Dib pulled a notepad out of his coat and quickly wrote down a message for the judge. Tearing the page out, he waved for the bailiff's attention and gestured to both the note and the judge, hoping he'd take the hint. Instead, the man just scowled at him.
"I'm not a mailman, if you've got something you want to say, just say it! It's not rocket science!" he said, leaving Dib silently groaning as he facepalmed in despair.
The judge, meanwhile, after not seeing or hearing anyone willing to step up in Gaz's defense, sighed in defeat.
"Very well then. I hereby dismiss all charges against the defendant, and find the plaintiff guilty of both giving false testimony and having not looked both ways before crossing the street, with a sentence of 50 years, to be carried out immediately," he declared, banging the gavel again.
"WHAT?!" Gaz yelled, as the bailiff walked over and handcuffed her wrists to her wheelchair's arms before she knew what was happening. Turning to her own lawyer, the brown-haired man nervously tugging at his cheap blue suit's collar, she demanded, "Are you going to just sit there and let this happen?!"
"Of course not! …I'm also going to remind you of the 'no refunds' policy that was in my ads, bye!" he said quickly, before jumping to his feet and dashing out the door before anyone knew what had happened, leaving Gaz to be wheeled out of the room towards the court's holding cells, swearing and screaming the whole way.
XXXXXXX
A few days later, Gaz was still in the courthouse cells. Due to a backlog at the overcrowded prison meaning they couldn't move her there yet, so she was left to alternate between impotent rage and silently sulking as she sat in the cell, which was so small and cramped that she wouldn't have been able to move around much even if she could still walk. And since she hadn't been processed yet, that meant she still had access to everything that had been on her person in the courtroom – including the damn monkey's paw, which she hadn't even realized she'd still had ahold of after the car collision.
"You piece of shit," she growled at the paw lying in her lap, "This is all your fault… no, this is Dib's fault, he should have done a better job of keeping you locked up, or put a better warning on you. Then I wouldn't have found you and been tempted to use you, and you wouldn't have screwed up my entire life!"
Naturally, the paw didn't respond, but Gaz could swear it was somehow mocking her. She was just about to drop it on the floor and run over it with her wheelchair a few times as stress relief, when the sound of the cell floor's door opening caught her attention. Confused, as it wasn't meal time, she peered past the bars and was surprised to see a guard leading Dib towards her cell, the large man leaving them alone once he'd done so.
"Uh, hi Gaz. How are you holding up?" Dib asked awkwardly, causing Gaz's eyebrows to shoot up.
"You got your voice back?" she asked in disbelief.
"Yeah, Tak figured out a way to stimulate my vocal chords to fix whatever was paralyzing them," he explained, "Kinda wish she'd done it sooner so I could have helped you out, but she apparently forgot she had the tech on hand to do it until it was too late for that."
"Oh, I bet she did," Gaz growled, picturing the green bitch laughing and dancing at what had happened in the courtroom before "remembering" how to restore Dib's voice. Shaking her head to clear it and refocus on the matter at hand, she glared at her brother, "Did you actually want something, or just to make me more miserable by sucking up my air?"
"Well, I was thinking about how we could start appealing your case. Now that I can talk, we can hire another lawyer who actually knows what he's doing and I can testify, and…" Dib began to say, though as he rambled on, Gaz tuned him out. She was fairly certain none of his half-assed ideas would work, so there was no point wasting time listening to him. Instead, an idea of her own sparked in her mind, as her eyes flicked between Dib and the paw, and her lip curled into a cruel smirk.
"Think fast," she said, tossing the paw at him, smirk growing as he instinctively caught it.
"Wait, what?" Dib sputtered, eyes widening as he realized what he was holding, watching as the paw's fingers uncurled in reaction to having a new owner, "What the hell?! Where'd you get this?"
"Yeah, yeah, I meddled with things I shouldn't have, and now I'm paying for it," Gaz replied dryly, rolling her eyes, "Now get with making the wishes to get me out of this mess."
In all honesty, Gaz didn't expect any wishes that Dib made would actually manage to help her out, but if even one managed to backfire on him the way all of hers had on her, it would make her feel immensely better.
"Gaz, are you kidding?" Dib asked incredulously, "If you really have been using this thing, you must have realized by now how dangerous wishes are! If I try to make one to help you, it'll probably just make things worse!"
"Fine, then don't use it for me. Don't you have anything you really want?" she pressed, "Come on, don't you wish that people would stop being morons and take you seriously or something? Maybe finally beat Zim for good?"
"Well, obviously I wish Zim would finally be exposed and captured, but I… wait a minute," Dib started to say, only to trail off as his brain caught up with his mouth. However, by the time that he realized what he'd just done, the paw's little finger had already curled up, and Gaz grinned in anticipation.
Seconds later, the door to the floor was flung open, and a horde of reporters and cameramen came pouring in.
"There he is!" one reporter yelled, pointing at Dib before running over and shoving a microphone into his face, "Mr. Membrane! How does it feel to finally be vindicated in your beliefs?"
"Wait, what?" Dib and Gaz asked in unison, her sounding more deadpan than him.
"Oh, I suppose you haven't heard yet, it's breaking news," the reporter said, "The alien called Zim has just been captured after a daring raid on his home base by the FBI, who thought he was just a moose smuggler. After an intense fight, they managed to detain him… admittedly at the cost of all the moose escaping and now stampeding through the city, but the point is that the alien has been caught and exposed for what he is. And given your long record of trying to do just that, you're now being declared a hero!"
"Really?" Dib exclaimed, starry-eyed in disbelieving joy, while Gaz groaned and facepalmed.
"Oh man, this is unbelievable, it's everything I've ever dreamed of. Man, I wish every other paranormal investigator could feel what I'm feeling right now," Dib said without even thinking, nor noticing the paw's ring finger curling up. Almost immediately, all the reporters' phones started ringing, and they began chattering in shock as they checked their messages.
"Oh my god, the Abominable Snowman just chased a bunch of mountain climbers down Mt. Everest!"
"The Loch Ness Monster just beached itself in front of a huge crowd of tourists!"
"A whole herd of Chupacabra were just seen crossing a busy street in Mexico City!"
"Bigfoot just walked into a coffeeshop in downtown Seattle and ordered an espresso!"
"This is huge!" the reporter who had first spoken to Dib exclaimed, "No one can deny the existence of the supernatural now! Paranormal studies will probably be the biggest and most respected field of science in the world from now on!"
Gaz's eye was twitching, but Dib was too caught up in the thrill of the moment to notice. Looking to the paw in his hand, and deciding to throw caution to the wind and actively make a somewhat selfish wish, he said, "I wish Tak was better so she could celebrate all this with me!"
The paw's middle finger curled up, and as soon as it was done, a familiar British voice could suddenly be heard yelling from behind the mob of reporters.
"Out of my way, you mouth-breathers!" a no longer bandaged Tak snapped as she shoved her way through the crowd, before throwing herself at Dib and pulling him into a hug, "Dib, it's unbelievable! I just got a message from Irk – the Tallest both just died of cholesterol poisoning and caused the Massive to crash in the process, killing most of the other tall Irkens, and the Control Brains say that I'm the tallest one left alive, which means I'm the Tallest now! I don't think I've ever felt better than I have in this exact moment!"
"That's great!" Dib said, glad that the reporters who too distracted by the world-shaking discoveries they were learning of to have paid attention to the couple's conversation, "Okay, so we need to start talking about how we can balance your new powers and authority with our relationship and how we can use it to help Earth…"
Watching all this joy unfold around her, Gaz grit her teeth so hard they felt like they were on the verge of breaking.
"Just be patient, it'll come," she muttered, "The big twist that'll ruin everything for him like it did to me, there's always a big twist, just wait for it."
By now practically drunk with happiness, Dib suddenly seemed to remember Gaz's presence. Looking to the paw's sole remaining extended finger, and not having seen any negative results yet, he shrugged and decided to put his last wish to good use and help her out after all.
"I wish Gaz was free of her cell so she could take part in all of this with us," he said. Gaz stared at him as the last finger curled up, torn between pleasant surprise that he would do that, and desperate hope that this wish likewise wouldn't go bad.
Unfortunately for her, it was at that moment that Zim's herd of escaped moose that were stampeding through the city burst into and through the lobby of the courthouse. And while normally this wouldn't affect the upper floors where the holding cells were, the fact was that this was an old building that was (ironically, given its dedication to upholding the law) not up to proper construction codes. As such, the sudden force of dozens of several-hundred pound moose running around all over its ground floor reverberated throughout the building and completely overwhelmed every weak spot.
CRACK
SMASH
Which just so happened to include Gaz's cell, where the far wall collapsed to expose the empty air outside the building, and the floor snapped down slightly to create an impromptu ramp. One which Gaz's wheelchair immediately began rolling down, straight towards the new hole.
"What the Hell?! No, no, no!" Gaz screamed, unable to stop the chair before it went right out the hole, leaving her to fall screaming several stories to crash into a pile of rubble on the sidewalk below.
"…Fuck my life," Gaz groaned, before she mercifully succumbed to unconsciousness and slipped into a coma. While the bad news was that she'd never awaken from it, the somewhat-good news was that the courts would decide that there was no point sending her to prison in such a state, so she was released to Dib's custody, where she would spend the rest of her days technically by his side and part of the new golden age he and Tak would create together.
The moral of this story is, of course, don't mess with magical monkey paws and they won't mess with you. What, you were expecting more?
XxxxxxxxxxxxxxX
The End
XxxxxxxxxxxxxxX
A/N: And done. Sorry if the ending is a little meh, but I couldn't think of a better note to end it on after delivering Gaz's final fate. Fun fact, in Cowardly's original outline the fall kills her, but I felt that was a bit of a downer. Admittedly, this wasn't that much kinder to her…
I doubt anyone will care enough to point this out, but I'll go ahead and admit that there's probably 10,000 things wrong with my portrayal of the legal system works, but let's just chalk that up to IZ style humor, which would no doubt present it similarly. Oh, and speaking of the courtroom scene, the lawyers were based on Blue Haired Lawyer and Lionel Hutz from The Simpsons, for no real reason than it popped into my head while I was writing it out.
And since I couldn't find a way to make it fit in the narrative, I'll just address the fates of Zim's minions after his capture here – GIR wandered off before the FBI raid, randomly bumped into MIMI, who had in fact become a club DJ again, and started a celebrity music career with her. Minimoose, meanwhile, fled with his antlered brethren and eventually led them into the wild, where they founded the free nation of Moosetopia.
Anyway, I think that covers everything. I hope all of you, especially The Cowardly Christian, enjoyed this little story. Happy Holidays to all, stay safe and healthy out there, and I'll see you all in the New Year.
Until then, please review!