Snuff Out a Thousand Suns
Arc 1: Chapter 6
Irken Round 19ZZR
Location: Milky Way Galaxy
Currently Passing Planet Mars
Green eyelids fluttered, and Zim heard the quiet ‘shf’ing of Irken medical equipment. Strange. Had he been in the human’s home for so long he was beginning to hallucinate, now? Rolling his eyes towards a small window, the Irken saw Earth a ways off. So that was it. He’d had this dream a few times since Dib captured him, and the planet should be exploding in three...two...one...
A supernova-esque explosion engulfed the ball of blue and green at just the moment Zim expected, and his lips twitched a bit. Definitely this dream again, then. In that case, Flurn should be showing up any moment to tend to his wounds, and so the Invader turned away from the window to wait.
After several long minutes, Zim started getting confused. Flurn had always shown up by this point in the dream; bandaging him while showering him in apologies for shattering what little heart the smaller boy had been willing to go against his Pak and show. Zim decided that perhaps the dream was a bit different this time, and he’d have to find Flurn on his own.
An attempt to shove himself up into a sitting position failed, and Zim realized that his bonds had followed him into his dreams this time. Another Irken, a bit shorter than Zim, came over at his movement, and pressed down on his chest. “Stay still, Invader! You need to heal.”
Zim gave a short bark of laughter. “Why should Zim...stay put in his dreams? Hm? This is the only way he can do...anything lately, so leave me alone!” He jerked away from the other’s touch, and immediately regretted moving. The wounds that Dib-pig had given him seemed to have stayed intact in the dream as well. Odd. That...had not happened before.
The medical drone snapped her fingers, and a table-headed drone rushed over. The medic took a small tube from the other, smearing a pale yellow gel across her fingers, and began rubbing it into Zim’s forehead. The Invader closed his eyes; enjoying the pleasant, numbing effect the gel spread throughout his body. “It’s all right now, Invader. This isn’t a dream, and you’ll be able to do plenty more once you’ve been able to heal properly. Now get some rest,” she murmured, rubbing the last of the gel into Zim’s skin and dropping the tube back onto the table-headed drone.
Zim wasn’t quite sure he was able to believe what the drone was saying to him, but it certainly seemed like a nice thought. And he had gotten the Dib’s sister to agree to help him. As he drifted into a sleep induced by the gel, he had to think that it would be nice if he wasn’t dreaming after all.
~-~-~
Shtirk watched from the front windows of the Massive as Earth exploded in a blaze of fire and garbage. His lips curled back in disgust at how much filth had just been spewed into space, and he gave a quick order to a drone to make sure all the pollutants were blasted by the ship’s lasers. Supposedly, Irk had been made into the unlivable ball of dirt it was today by the debris falling from a nearby bit of space that had housed a heavily polluted planet, until one of the planet’s stupid inhabitants had accidentally blown the whole thing into nothing. Shtirk personally didn’t believe the tale, but it was still a nasty thought.
A door leading from the main deck opened with a quiet ‘shwoop’, and Shtirk turned to see Flurn enter, followed by the human girl. Her face was buried in some primitive gaming device, and Shtirk frowned. Didn’t she realize just whose presence she was in? The red-eyed Irken cleared his throat, raising an eye ridge at the girl. Flurn nudged her, and she sighed, flicking the game’s power switch, and slipped it into a pocket. “So. You fixed a Spittle Runner, huh?”
“I guess,” the human replied, looking around the deck. “Nice place you got.”
Shtirk smirked. “Thanks. I decorated myself.” Hovering across the floor, he looked down at the girl, inspecting her. “You have a name, human?”
“Gaz.”
“Okay then, drone-in-training Gaz. Let’s give you a quick test; make sure you actually can work on our equipment.”
Gaz sighed. “Can you make it quick? I’ve tried a million times to kill Count Pigula, and he keeps killing me with acid vomit. I’d like to get back to that.”
“Pause as soon as he opens his mouth. He’ll be frozen for five seconds when you start it back up,” Flurn said, leading Gaz across the deck.
“You’ve played Piggy Hunters 8?” Gaz asked in surprise.
“Oh, yeah,” Flurn replied. “The Miyamotians send their games through the whole universe. Your planet was one of the last to get anything, I guess. That one came out ages ago.”
Shtirk cleared his throat again, frowning at the other two. “If you’re finished, can we move on?” Flurn grinned sheepishly, nodding and pushing Gaz forward. “Okay. Now, we’ll give you one week to fix everything here,” he said, pulling a sheet off a rather large table, “and if you can do it, you get the technician job. And that’s an Irken week. Earth’s orbit was pretty fast compared to the rest of the universe, so I’d estimate it to be about six or so weeks for you.”
Gaz nodded, picking up some sort of gun that was broken in two. “And if I don’t?”
“We shoot you out the airlock.”
“Shtirk!”
“What?” Flurn glared at the red-eyed Tallest.
“Don’t worry about me; I’ll be fine,” Gaz said boredly, picking up the other half of the gun to see how it would go together. “I got this.”
Flurn looked at Shtirk nervously before slowly nodding. “Okay. Don’t think Shtirk’s kidding, though; got it?”
Gaz glanced at the Irken for a moment before rolling her eyes and turning back to the equipment.
“Come on, Flurn. Let’s leave her to it,” Shtirk said, wrapping an arm around the purple-eyed Tallest’s shoulders and leading him back towards their rooms.
~-~-~
Several hallways over, Zim woke up again. He glanced around the small, white room he was in, easily recognizing it as a healing quarters, but unsure as to how he’d arrived in it. A female medical drone walked over to him, and Zim realized it was the same one who’d told him his dream wasn’t a dream earlier. “Hello, Invader. How are you feeling?” she asked quietly, smoothing a squishy purple ball between his left antenna, and the small nub that had been left of his right.
“Tired,” Zim murmured. “You were in Zim’s dream earlier.”
The drone smiled, pulling the ball back off and studying it. “I believe I told you that you weren’t dreaming, remember? And according to this, you’re in fairly good shape, considering that you were captured by an alien. You’re a lucky man.”
Zim perked his antenna a bit at that. “If I have been taken...from the Dib...then where is Zim now?”
“Zim is on board the Massive, in the Tallests’ personal healing quarters,” the drone replied, opening a small tub of pale pink salve and rubbing some on the nub. “Tallest Flurn was quite upset when he learned what had happened to an Invader. He insisted that we come down and get you before destroying the planet.”
A warmth spread in the bottom of Zim’s squeedlyspooch, and the small Invader decided it was probably connected to the pleasantly numbing affect the salve was having on his head. “So...the Dib has been deactivated..?”
“I’m not sure, actually,” the drone said, closing the salve and checking a bag of something that was slowly draining into Zim’s bloodstream. “There were two humans brought onto the ship, I think. If I had to guess, I would say that this ‘Dib’ was probably the one with the black fur on his head. It was so strange, too; his head was so large, and the fur barely covered the top. The other human’s fur covered her entire head, except the face. The male was bleeding quite badly from his face, and Tallest Flurn barely let me put a patch on to keep him from bleeding to death. I think he’s in a holding cell.”
Zim nodded. “That is the Dib.” He breathed a heavy sigh, feeling his mind slip away again. “Are you giving Zim...sedatives..?” he asked, struggling to stay awake.
The drone smiled, tapping the bag. “It’ll be easier on you if you sleep for a while. We need to speed your outer skin’s hardening, and it’ll be a painful process. Just rest, and let us take care of you. All right?”
The Invader’s eyes slowly slipped closed. He hadn’t let anyone take care of him in years. Perhaps...letting someone do that would be all right just this once.
~-~-~
Shtirk sighed, laying back in bed. “That was fun,” he murmured, nuzzling a cheek against one of Flurn’s antennae. The younger male snuggled into the blankets. Shtirk smirked, poking the forehead peeking out from under the covers. “C’mere.”
Flurn wriggled out from under the blanket, smiling shyly at his lover. “Yes?”
“You were pretty feisty just now. What’s got you so riled up, hm?” the red-eyed Irken asked, pulling the other closer.
Flurn shrugged a little. “I dunno. Just the excitement of being off the Massive for once, I guess,” he said, tilting his head back to let Shtirk nibble at the base of his neck. “One of us should go check on Zim, y’know,” he murmured.
“Ah, leave him be,” Shtirk grumbled. “They’ll probably have him knocked out anyway.”
Flurn wriggled out of the other’s hold with a sigh. “I know, but we just brought all the ships down here to get him. The least we can do is make sure he’s been settled in.”
Shtirk frowned as the purple-eyed Irken dressed himself. “Fine,” he sighed. “I’ll be here when you’re done.” Flurn hovered over, rubbing the tip of an antennae against the top of Shtirk’s head.
“I won’t be long,” he said quietly, before turning and leaving the room.
The red-eyed Tallest glared at the door for several minutes after Flurn had left. If all it took was a couple of hours of Zim being on the ship to start undoing all of Shtirk’s work from the past ten rounds to get Flurn over that little defect, he was going to have to do something about it, and do something fast.
~*~*~
I don’t own Invader Zim. This is obvious. If I were Mr. Vasquez, I’d be too busy vomiting out of every orifice on my body from the sheer thought of Zim having a sexual relationship with any of the other characters to be typing this right now.
Short chapter again. But that’s how I roll. *puts on sunglasses and poses all awesome-like* Drop a review on your way out, and I won’t set the rabid spider monkeys on you.