Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Despite what the others around you said, you didn’t get the worst assignment possible. Your fellow soldiers winged for you, your pod-mates said their final goodbyes as if they thought you would never return, and the Tallests, of course, mocked you for your apparent misery when giving you the assignment. 

All in all, you thought it couldn’t possibly be as bad as everyone seemed to think it was. You’d take dealing with a rogue defective on some backwater planet over being a guard-transfer to Moo-Ping 10 any day of the week- the Tallests seemed to think that the goblin they were sending you to worse than any given Gellaxis soldier. Even the Tallests, in your oh-so-humble opinion, could be wrong.

-

The emotion-dampener in your PAK sure did help; if any lesser soldier, invader, or miscellaneous other third thing was on this pedestal getting eyed down by the Almighty Tallest, they might be shaking in their ill-fitting boots. Why the Tallest insisted that giving assignments must be a grand spectacle you’d never understand, but in all fairness, it wasn’t your job to. 

You were second-to-last in line to receive your mission. It wasn’t your first rodeo, and it wouldn’t be your last, but the sight of the Control Brains always managed to sneak past the emotion-dampener and send a chill all the way up your spine. The Tallests stood against the glaring red lights in silhouette, arguing amongst themselves from seperate stone pedestals. The fellow before you clambered down from his assignment, looking somewhat pleased but more bared than anything- his assignment had been so boring that you hadn’t even paid it any mind.

Your attention, however, was quickly acquired when the Tallest both snapped bolt upright and pointed at you in unison. You jumped, your antennae prickling as you once again glanced at the Control Brains you had been forcing yourself not to look at.

“YOU!” Tallest Red barked, and he slouched forward to point at you once again, rather aggressively. “ACQUISITOR LUCKY.”

You blinked a couple of times and looked at the soldier behind you, who was not named Lucky- what a coincidence! That was also not your name. 

“ARE YOU DEAF? STEP UP TO THE PLATFORM.” It was Tallest Purple who spoke this time, with less volume but just as much malice dripping from his voice. 

“I guess your name is Lucky now.” The soldier behind you half-snickered, half-whispered, but any schadenfreude he was experiencing fizzled away quickly.

You began to clamber up to the platform that had been hap-hazardly constructed out of hard light and fiberglass. The emotion-dampening nodule was getting a fair workout today- you had no idea what you’d done to acquire the ire of the Tallests. You always did your jobs quickly, efficiently, and with no fuss, even if it was something as trivial as taking a few pennies from a custodian to get fund the Tallests’ incessant need to be constantly eating various disgusting foods. Having both of them glaring down at you from the tall stone pedestals that you were sure hadn’t been this tall before was nerve-wracking to say the least.

Now that you were in better lighting, you could see that the Tallests looked worse for wear. Their exo-suits had burn-marks and the metal had warped, their antennae moved little and sluggishly as if they were sore, there were bruises on various parts of their faces; even their posture, which was horrible on the best of days, looked worse than usual. They weren’t the only Irken that you had seen with this kind of damage, either; there were actually quite a few of your pod-mates that had seemed rag-tag as well, but you were never one to initiate conversation with people you only saw when you were going to do maintenance on your PAK or to artificially sleep in preparation for your next mission.

Tallest Purple hovered close to the lip of his platform and glared at you.

“Acquisitor (Y/N), Sector 821, well-known thief and stickiest-of-fingers-”

“That’s what Acquisitors are. That’s what all Acquisitors are.”

“SHUT UP.”

“You shut up.”

You stood there on the platform with your hands locked behind your back, antennae swaying slowly back and forth to give yourself some sort of stimulation.

“Acquisitor (Y/N), Sector 821, or as we’ve been calling you, Lucky Duck Jerkface,” Purple finally managed to get the sentence out of his mouth, the immature nickname earning a wave of cruel laughter. You didn’t take it too personally, every joke they made got that. “You wanna know why we call you that? Very loudly? To your face?”

You said nothing, but moved your antennae to indicate that you were listening, even if being yelled at by the overlords in front of the Control Brains was nearly causing you to disassociate despite the dampening nodule.

Tallest Red craned his back and the metal in his suit groaned. “You were one of the few Acquisitors- no, one of the few Irken to escape the trauma aboard the Massive when we shot high-speed into a Florpus hole.”

A wave of echoing boos rippled around the chamber.

You looked at them, confused. “I was on commission, my Tallests-”

“DON’T INTERRUPT THE ASSIGNING.” Tallest Purple barked down at you from his pedestal- you hadn’t remembered them being this irritable.

You tightened your grip on your arms behind your back and nodded, swallowing hard.

“As I was saying,” Tallest Red resumed his spiteful speech, “You were one of the only Irken to escape mass trauma aboard the Massive when we flew directly into the Florpus hole. You jerk.”

Another wave of boos echoed around the chamber, causing your antennae to quiver with the excess noise- you shook your head to attempt to clear it, but once again, said nothing.

“You’re also the only one of the uninjured Irken stupid and brave enough to show your face back at the Massive so soon after. So we can get your punishment out of the way! And then you can get back to stealing things for us.” Purple clapped his claws together, seemingly more concerned with the latter than the former. 

A sense of dread tried to settle in your abdomen, but the dampener dulled it for the moment. 

“Acquisitor (Y/N), Lucky Duck Jerkface Extraordinaire,” Red stood stock straight again and pointed once more, “Deal with the defective Zim on planet Urth.”

The confused silence that filled the room following his statement lasted a few seconds. 

You held out one hand and tilted your head, “Uh… my Tallest… what do you mean ‘deal’ with him?”

“Deal with him. Your Tallests command it!”

You took a tentative step forward, “But in what way do you m-”

“Roast him, fry him, get him arrested, frame him for intergalactic tax fraud, we don’t care. Just deal with him. We’re tired of his stupid face. OH, speaking of, disable his ability to video-call the Massive when you get there. That should be the first thing you do. Now get off the platform.”

Your antennae shot up and you began to stutter out a protest, but as your voice caught in your throat, you saw one of the programming wires from the Control Brains begin to arch up and angle itself at you. 

“Yes, my Tallest.” You muttered before scrambling off the stage and out of the way of their harsh, irritated gazes. 

Your antennae caught every vibration in the air, sending the rattles down through to your brain, clouding your vision as you pushed through the crowd of assigned invaders, acquisitors, custodians, and various other poor irkens that had pooled on the other side of the door, all whispering amongst themselves about their respective missions. As you began to part the crowd numbly to return to your barracks clear on the other side of the Massive, a clawed hand grappled your forearm.

You hissed and reared up, bearing your layered, zig-zag teeth, but you soon quieted when your PAK’s nodule began to become better operational now that you were out of the limelight and the echoing chamber. The flash of defensive anger quelled and you closed your eyes as it reset you for the moment, but the grip on your arm only just barely loosened.

“-ello? Can ya hear me?”

The antennae on your head had been flush with your skull as the PAK administered the calming agent, but as soon as you realized you were being spoken to, they perked up just a bit.

“Yeah, yeah-” You muttered in response.

“Good, thank Irk, you looked like you were about to pass out.” Opening your eyes, you recognized the irken standing nearby, and you shook him off of your arm.

“You know better than to just grab my arm, Vitz.”

The irken let go of your forearm and held up his claws in mock surrender. There was an ever-present glimmer of mischief in his blue-green eyes, but now it seemed dull in comparison to its normal intensity. 

“I didn’t know if you could find your way back to the barracks on your own looking like you were gonna puke. You really did get the literal worst mission, Lucky- can I call you Lucky?”

A chittering growl slipped from your throat and you passed him by and started to make your way through the halls, attempting to reach a transfer bay. Vitz was a fellow acquisitor, excellent prankster, and mild thorn-in-your-side. Nobody in your sect was totally unbearable, but Vitz was more tolerable than most- he was perhaps the best at what he did, but unless directly told to do so by a supervisor, he spent most of his time stealing food for himself and scarfing it down in the vents so he wouldn’t have to share with anybody once he returned to his assignments. Between the both of you, pulling mild pranks on those aboard the Massive was a fun past-time. Pulling not-so-mild and much more deadly pranks on planets they were sent to scout on was double fun and twice the reward- you both were hellions, but you were so good at getting out of dodge before you were caught that the fingers never pointed at you.

As the two of you knifed through the thinning crowds, a couple of pitying glances were thrown your way, and some angrier glances from particularly-singed irken soldiers, but you paid them no mind. You hated coming up to the announcement and control room levels anyway, too many irken loitering around and yelling for no reason.

Vitz loped along behind you but soon caught up, walking next to you once the hallway widened. He took note of the various glares and glances, his antennae bobbing as he walked. “Man, what mission did you get? Half the ship looks like it wants to kill you.”

You scoffed, “You weren’t listening?”

“I’m stuck on the stupid dome ship until the next assignment batch doing custiodial work. I may or may not have attempting to nab something that belonged to the Tallest.”

“Please tell me it was something good and not dimestore schlock.” You rounded a corner and saw the teleportation pads that began the several-stop journey to your barracks.

“It was dimestore schlock.” Vitz said proudly, “and I almost got away with said dimestore schlock. Unfortunately, the vent system hasn’t been completely repaired after that black hole. It collapsed into a PAK bay. Anyway, no, to answer your question, I was definitely not listening.”

You winced and brought your communicator up to your face so you could see better; for irken to have such big eyes, their eyesight was terrible. “Lemme see if I can pull it up.”

Vitz stopped and waited attentively for the hologram, rocking back and forth on his heels and humming something that had no tune at all. “You doin’ ok? Your antennae are still shaking.”

You gave them an experimental twitch as you fiddled with your gauntlet. “Yeah, I’m fine. It was just loud.”

“Don’t feel too bad, (Y/N)- every irken gets put on blast in from of the Tallests at some point. It’s like a rite of passage. You’re a real irken now, oooooo-” Vitz wiggled his fingers and made a faux-spooky ghost noise, beginning to laugh but cutting off abruptly as your hologram activated.

Your pod-mate stuttered, almost seeming not to believe what he was seeing. He looked at you, his eyes as wide as saucers, “You can’t be serious. Him? You’ve gotta deal with him?”

A look of disgust and mild irritation rippled his features as he glared at the hologram- an irken soldier wearing the invader uniform, just like any other (In fact, you thought that perhaps you had been mistakenly given a picture of Invader Tenn), excepting the fact that he was… small. Not the shortest irken you’d ever seen, but definitely the shrimpiest in terms of height-versus-body-mass. His bright ruby-magenta eyes seemed to glare at you both through the blue filter of the hologram, a self-confident and oh-so-stupid grin plastered across his face. 

This was the defective you had to deal with? This was the goblin that had managed to catapult the Massive into a Florpus hole while you were moseying along the other side of the galaxy? Yeah, right.

Vitz, however, did not share your apparent boredom. He gave you a withering, pitying grin and patted your shoulder before beginning to walk towards the teleporter. 

“Aw man, the Tallests so have it out for you.”

Chapter Text

The cruiser you had been assigned was nearly ready for departure and was set on an auto-locked course- it would return to the Massive when you arrived at your destination: a planet called either Urth or Earth, you couldn’t tell which and it really didn’t matter all that much as long as you got there. Personal cruisers were reserved for invaders rather than Acquisitors, and as such, you had none of your own.

Now that you thought about it, you had no idea why an Acquisitor was being sent on such a mission. You weren’t one to complain since you’d been disinfecting control rooms for Irk knew how long waiting for an assignment batch, but it seemed more like a job for either an elite to do or for simple pest control. 

Or, rather, no idea other than simple spite. The Tallests were oh-so known for simple spite. All irken were, really, but still.

As you settled into the cruiser and the docking station around you released the fuel valves, you looked past the open windshield and peered into the hangar bay. Most of the irken crushed into the bay were maintenance drones, a few invaders with their private cruisers arriving or departing, as well as a couple of snack-food delivery stocks from processing planets.

Behind the bannister of the far wall you saw a dark black and purple uniform quickly dash through several cleaning drones. He skidded to a halt, Vitz waving at you vehemently to get your attention before springing over the railing (miraculously, without the use of his PAK legs) and onto the catwalk, narrowly avoiding falling and plummeting into the drop space that allowed leaving cruisers to maneuver and causing the two technicians that had been looking through various holograms to shriek at an ungodly volume. He bared his teeth in a devious grin as he loped forward before skidding to a halt in front of your dock.

“Tried to leave without saying goodbye? Y’know, that’s so rude. I’m never gonna speak to you again, after all, you might as well give me a goodbye snack or something.”

You opened some of the schematics of the cruiser to see if you needed any updates, looking through the makeup before getting bored by the excess amounts of numbers that you didn’t need if the thing was going to be running on autopilot. “Are you completely sure you’re not trying to take the place of one of the Tallests? Or like… both of them, for that matter? You eat half their food anyway. You’re just lucky they don’t notice as long as some snacks manage to reach them.”

“I’m not lucky, you’re Lucky.”

“You’re about to be dead is what you are.”

Vitz let out a goblin-like giggle and waved his claws dismissively. He took inventory of the ship you were currently in and his energy seemed to wither along with his wide grin, the sharp spark in his eyes dulling while he crossed his arms over his chest. “They really put you on this mission, huh?”

You blinked and leaned back in the seat, your antennae brushing the ceiling of the cruiser, suddenly feeling more anxious than you had been the whole day- if Vitz was worried, then maybe you should be a little less aloof. You swallow and try to steel your nerves by shutting your eyes and twitching your antennae a few times, attempting a soft reset without having to activate the dampening nodule in your PAK.

Vitz seemed to realize his mistake and assumed a much more confident stance, hands on his hips and standing on the tips of his toes. “Aw c’mon, (Y/N), don’t let my personal grievances give you a splooch-attack. Zim is lucky they’re only sending you; if they sent both of us, we might actually end up accidentally killing him.”

You quirked an eyebrow and gave him a dry smile. “Accidentally?”

“Accidentally.” Vitz gave you exaggerated air quotes and another gremlin grin, “I mean, we aren’t programmed to kill on purpose.”

You groaned and knocked your head back against the seat cushion. “Don’t remind me. That would make things so much easier.”

Acquisitors were a rather new branch of the Irken Empire, and while your sect wasn’t the first, it was one of those that were extremely specialized in being able to slip in and out of places whilst remaining undetected. Acquisitors were programmed by the Control Brains to be sneaky, efficient, and greedier than the average irken to locate and steal as many valuable goods as possible… even if sometimes, those goods already technically belonged to the Empire. You were not, however, programmed to kill on purpose. You figured that it was because irkens had a love for showmanship and bravado, especially when it came to dominating foreign planets, consuming all their natural resources, and then rubbing it in the face of the native populace before the husk was turned into something like a food court or a storage facility for trashed irken technology. Killing an enemy quietly and without credit was an almost blasphemous thought, even for you.

But hey, you weren’t an invader, and you certainly weren’t an elite. You were just good at being sneaky, listening in on conversations you weren’t supposed to be listening to, and having imaginary arguments with yourself while you waited for chances to slip out of whatever situation your current mission had put you in.

“Hey, Irk to (Y/N).”

You snapped back to the present, antennae straight up, and before you could stop yourself, you blurted, “Sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

A look of incredulous confusion rippled over Vitz’ face briefly before he snickered and shook it off. “At least you’re honest about it. Y’didn’t miss anything anyhow. Just thinking about how quickly this could be done if the Tallests sent someone who could use a phaser gun instead of someone who once got caught upside down in a vent because it was warm and fell asleep there.”

You lurched forward out of the cruiser and grappled at the tail of his tunic, snapping your teeth together as a chitter slipped from your throat. Vitz stuttered backwards, narrowly missing your grip, guffawing and causing a few technicians to give you the blankest dirty looks you’d ever seen. The deeper chattering in your throat lessened while you slouched back into the cockpit of your cruiser, though you couldn’t help but smile- you found yourself mirroring emotions quite often, but Vitz wore his on his sleeves so often that you were mostly an amplification of his own emotions whenever you were in the same place, which was quite a lot. 

“Don’t be bitter about it, be better at your job.” He gave a bent-at-the-waist bow and flattened his antennae against his head, eyeing you smugly before straightening his back. 

“You practically live in the ventilation system, I’m not taking this from you.” Your claws tapped a few pressure pads on the control board of your cruiser, and the locks holding it in place opened with a harsh metal snapping sound. 

It dropped a few inches before it began to hover, and you received a few messages warning you to shut the windshield before leaving the Massive. Vitz’ smile faltered and he took a step back, almost as if he had just now realized that you’d been having this conversation immediately before you departed on your mission. A stab of unease hit you again as you saw his expression change.

Your antennae quivered with the vibrations of the craft, but you began to wiggle them yourself to relieve a probably-stress-related headache that was beginning to blossom through your skull. With a sigh, you leaned forward out of the cruiser again and reached out one hand, giving your friend a weakly hopeful grin. “See ya around?”

Vitz scoffed softly before taking your hand and shaking it firmly in both of his. “Come back to the Massive soon. It’s gonna get so boring without anyone to pull pranks with.” He gave you another grin, this one much more forced as his lips peeled back from his teeth, “Call me when you get the chance, okay? Urth is almost a half-orbit away.”

You slouched back into your cruiser and shut the windshield. The autopilot took control of the craft and prompted, Begin journey to Urth, Y/N?

You gave Vitz one last wave and spoke into the microphone, wincing at the metallic overlay it gave your voice. “I’ll call you when I get there, man. See ya soon, stay out of trouble!”

Journey to Urth initiated.

The cruiser lowered itself from the hangar and began to align itself on some predetermined track. As it began to move and gain speed the further it travelled, you could see through the tinted windshield that Vitz was skittering on all fours along the catwalk before skidding to a halt at the end, waving aggressively to get your attention before yelling so loudly that you could hear it through the hard-light-shield, “NO!”

Your cruiser sped through the departure tunnel and spat you out into the swarm of irken ships that surrounded the Massive. Man, there’s so many. What are they even doing? I guess it looks cool.

Your little auto-pilot cruiser puttered off in a miscellaneous direction while you opened an analytics hologram with one hand. The sharpness of the noise was startling, and it took you a moment to realize that other than the vibration of the ship’s hovering mechanisms, that it was completely silent. You gulped, peering around you and looking to the side as the Massive grew smaller and smaller the further you wandered. You had been assigned no SIR unit, your communicator was currently inactive until you reached a proper base- you were positively alone. A cold feeling seemed to bubble through you and you sighed, settling back into your chair- you’d never been completely isolated. Even as a smeet, you had your podmates, and even on missions, you had the people you were trying to avoid to keep you company… sort of.

You growled to yourself and closed your eyes, mentally probing the data within your PAK to find- aha! There it was.

Initiating stasis until arrival on Urth. Begin stasis, Y/N?

Taking one good look around you and finding that you were still surrounded by the deep black void of space, you selected ‘yes’, and your PAK began to administer a heavily-synthesized form of anesthesia. Your vision faded, and your last coherent thought hung there in your brain for a moment before you slipped into unconsciousness.

He better be worth all of this trouble.

-

-

-

So perhaps Phase Two had its… hiccups. 

The Dib-thing so incessantly forced himself into every well thought out, artisanally concocted plan that Zim had to offer. It wasn’t a new occurrence, but it was an oh-so irritating one. Despite literally having teleported the entire stupid, smelly planet directly into the pathway of the Armada, and summoning an amazing, destructive Florpus hole, the Dib-thing still somehow managed to steal his moose, relocate said stupid, smelly planet back to its original coordinates clear across the galaxy, and somehow managed to steal back his ridiculous clown-puppy-blunt-force-trauma-inducer . 

As such, one could say that Zim was not having a wonderful week, but perhaps one could tell that by the track that had been beaten into his floor by his pacing. He was muttering to himself at varying pitches and volumes, hunching so far forward that if he placed his his claws down he could traipse around on all fours. There were black scuff marks along the tile from his walking and occasional frustrated fits of kicking. 

His antennae were almost flush with his head while bobbing sporadically with every step trudging step he took, but they pricked forward as he let out an annoyed series of yells and exclamations of no particular meaning.

The living room of his fortress was empty other than himself and the various pieces of furniture that had always been there, completely clean and spotless- he’d actually had to re-assemble the ‘house’ part of his base after the teleportation of the planet had caused the two structural-support-condos he had nestled his base between to collapse into themselves… well, the teleportation and the stomping of his fantastic, amazing, flaming-peanut-spewing throne.

“PAH!” He straightened his spine, stiff as an arrow, “Phase Two was no failure on Zim’s part. A minor setback! For soon, he will initiate Phase TWO-B .”

He wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular as much as yelling to hear his own voice, as evidenced when he repeated the words ‘phase two-b’ at varying volumes and pitches as if testing which one sounded the best.

Zim stopped his pacing and thought, tapping his claws against his lip and letting quiet to fill the room. The quiet didn’t last too terribly long with his sharp, sudden shout of, “COMPUTER! BEGIN DOCUMENTATION OF ALL PASSIVE MENTIONS OF PHASE TWO-B.”

“Ugh, fine.”

“Heheheh,” He hunched over and his lip peeled away from his teeth as he grinned, “Yessss. Soon, commencement of Phayztoobee shall begin. Soon… oh-so soon.”

“What is it?”

“Eh?”

The computer’s monitor flashed a brief question mark before going black again. “What is Phase 2-B?”

“SILENCE, NOBODY ASKED YOU.” Zim snarled, standing on tiptoe and gesturing violently at the computer. His posture changed to a mild forward-lean when he rested his weight properly on his feet. 

The irken brought his claws to his mouth again, pondering. What was Phase-2B? He hadn’t made it up yet.

The click of the front door unlocking caused his antennae to prick up, but he didn’t spring backward into the shadows of the unlit kitchen like he wanted to. GIR entered the house with his tattered costume already half-shed, and a foodstuff of indiscernible origin in his right hand, humming something that had apparently no tune. 

Zim scoffed in disgust, narrowing his bright ruby eyes. “Must you bring filth into the base instead of consuming it outside? We talked about this!”

“Sure did!” The robot shed his baggy costume and threw the wad of meat, cheese, and what was perhaps a tortilla into the air to catch it in his mouth and slurp it all down in one gulp.

The irken shuddered, unable to wipe the disgust from his face. “What have you been doing all day? I’ve been attempting to concoct the fantastic PHAYZTOOBEE!”

“Went to get some pizza.” He trotted toward the couch, the sound of his feet against the tile reminiscent of cans being dragged behind a car. 

“GIR, that was THREE days ago.”

"Line was long!” He said defensively before turning on the television.

Zim snorted, grumbling to himself again and beginning to trudge toward the kitchen. The lights snapped on automatically when he entered, and he hopped onto the lid of the awkwardly-placed toilet. “COMPUTER! Take me to the laaaaab. I must BRAINSTORM AGAIN now that the smelly Dib-thing has become a nuisance once more.”

In the living room, GIR suddenly brittled up and sat stock still, his blue optics changing to a harsh, bright red. The antennae on his head pinged, his eyes changing color with every burst, and he slackened again. “YA GOTTA FRIEND ON THE WAY! CLEAN YOUR ROOM!”

Zim had since begun his descent into his labs, but shouted up the tubing, “ZIM HAS NO FRIENDS! THE DELIVERY HUMAN IS NO FRIEND OF ZIM!”

GIR lost interest in the conversation as quickly as it started, and resumed watching his show while happily kicking his legs, having already forgotten the caught signal.

Chapter Text

Arrival to Urth imminent. Administering methylphenidate. 

Arrival in 115 Urth Minutes.  

-

The Dib-stink’s hypervigilance had not faded a single bit. On the previous day, Zim surmised that perhaps the human nuisance baby would not expect him to attempt anything again so recently after his minor setback, or perhaps the return of the child’s ignorant cyborg father would indicate that he wished to spend time with his family like any lower life-form, and therefore not allow him as much free-time to interfere. Unfortunately, the ever-annoying human trashboy spent his time the same way he always had: by invading Zim’s personal space and stealing the fake mail that he had sent to the house for the sake of immersion.

Currently the irken was sitting with legs and arms crossed under the glaring fluorescents of the classroom. His hearing was muffled beneath his itchy synthetic wig and his sight was restricted by his itchy synthetic contacts, but he forced himself to twitch instead of scratching at them. He had a bored glower on his face, eyes narrowed and a snarl attempting to form on his lips. 

Zim could feel the vigilant, smug stare boring into the side of his head, but he wouldn’t give Dib the satisfaction or the honor of eye contact. Zim had bided his time before, and he would bide his time again, even if the time spent would be much more annoying.

The supposedly-human teacher thing had been caterwauling for the final two or so hours of school on various subjects, which Zim could at the very least understand. When he did it, though, he did it with purpose, intent, and meaning. For the most part, anyway- sometimes he did get frustrated. Ms. Bitters, it seemed, was frustrated quite often, and if Zim had to wrangle a whole room full of snivelling earth children without being able to vaporize the nuclei out of their cells, he supposed he would be as well.

His back tensed when the bell rang and shook him out of his stupor as the students of the class began to scream at varying pitches and create a crush of drooling, loud bodies all attempting to exit the classroom at once. Zim watched in disgust but remained in his seat until the floor in front of and beside him cleared, holding his limbs close to his body and leaning hard against the wall. Once he was free, he left his desk and began to trudge briskly down the hall, arms behind his back and slouched forward, avoiding the gaze of the teacher-thing that growled at him in passing. He felt the familiar annoying stare of the Dib-thing, but for once, he was blessedly silent rather than screaming. The irken also felt that he could have been gloating to himself as well, which was very possible, but Zim decided it better to save his energy for later, when he would most certainly not be quiet about his own personal gloating. 

He was about halfway down the skool walkway when he heard the crack of thunder nearby. Zim jumped, realizing that the dark sky wasn’t just from the dense pollution this time, and continued his trek just a little faster- he hadn’t had a chance since his setback to apply a fresh coating of paste to waterproof himself, and the old one had long since peeled off after his atoms got rearranged a few times in the Florpus hole when he phased into other dimensions.

Zim tossed a glance over his shoulder, irritated, and noticed that the human child was following him at a farther distance this time, opting to walk beside his horrifying sister while still staring aggressively at the irken further ahead of him on the sidewalk. He growled low, annoyed, and said nothing, instead opting to continue on his way. There was so much spare energy rattling around in his body from suppressing it all day in order to appear ‘normal’, lest any of the human worm children recognize him from his close-to-world-domination attempt- this was the only day he’d been back to the skool thus far, but like usual, nobody paid his previous absence any mind.

Nobody except the Dib-stink. Of course.

His brisk walk morphed into something more akin to a trot as the thunder above rumbled again. One of the sets of footsteps behind him sped up, the other still slow and distracted. 

The irken said nothing, attempting to keep his mouth shut as he scrambled onto his street; the sight of his base was a welcome relief, with it’s ghastly scattered pipes and bulbous-eyed lawn gnomes. The rain began to fall, and he broke out into a full run, his teeth gritted.

“ZIM!”

The Dib-thing’s voice cracked, peeling out against the empty sideway- Zim paid it no mind as he dashed to his front door.

“HAVEN’T YOU DONE ENOUGH, WORM BABY? LEAVE ZIM TO PLOT YOUR DEMISE IN SOLITUDE!” He finally allows himself to spit, looking back over his shoulder at the human child, who seemed to not actually be watching him. A few drops of rain hit his skin, causing him to hiss and bolt the last few feet to the door where he was protected by the slight overhang.

The door snapped open and the two fake parental units he’d made welcomed him back, hollow and tinny, and he shoved past them into his living room. Dib approached the house as the rain began to let go while pointing aggressively.

“ZIM! Whatizzat? A monkey?” He shouted, his face twisted in confusion, stopping dead in his tracks and holding his hand over his eyes. “What new diabolical thing have you concocted in the week you’ve been gone? There’s something on the roof!”

“YES, IT’S MY ROOF!”

“What?”

Zim slammed the door of his base and ripped off his wig, shaking his head viciously and letting his antennae breathe and get used to unfiltered sound for a moment. He huffed, listening to the rain hit the hard-light rooftop- it sounded sloping and uneven. Maybe one of the sensors was off, whatever, he’d check later when he stopped itching. 

“GIR!” No answer from inside the base came, and he scoffed. The irken removed his contacts and blinked, letting his own eyes refocus and relax now that the white tint was gone. 

“Insolent human trash child. ZIM’S ROOF IS FLAWLESS! Must he follow me home on such an abhorrent night and insult my superior irken-roofing technology? PAH! If he touched the hard-light sensors, his stupid human hair would COMBUST! OH, WOULD IT COMBUST. ”

He resumed yelling to nobody in particular as the computer arms stored his wig and contacts for sterilization, pushing a number of command buttons on his bracer and setting the basement to prepare a paste bath. He clawed at the side of his face that rain had managed to graze, scratching.

“Feh. Minor setbacks! Many minor setbacks lead to A FANTASTICAL WORLDLY DOMINA-”

KATHUNK.

Zim froze, hunkering toward the ground and cocking his antennae. The computer beeped, announcing, “HARD LIGHT BARRIER BREACHED. REGENERATING AND REINFORCING.”

Oh. It was actually his roof. 

Glancing out the window showed that the gnomes on the front lawn were all in sentry mode, rotating their heads in varying directions. Zim narrowed his eyes and straightened to stand on his toes. “COMPUTER! WHAT ENTERED MY DOMICILE?”

The computer took a moment to calculate and responded, “Irken in origin.”

An annoyed cold feeling settled in his abdomen.

“OF COURSE I ENTERED MY BASE! DON’T ATTEMPT FUNNY HAHA MOMENTS ON SUCH A DREADFUL DAY.” Zim snapped, a little off-put that he’d been spooked by such a mundane thing as forgetting to recalibrate his hard light sensors and walking into his own house.

The irken stomped through his dark kitchen and sprung into the oddly placed toilet, not enjoying the hollow-ness of his faux-house and wishing to be surrounded by familiar technology. The descent into his lab was fast and claustrophobic, as always, but he didn’t mind too terribly much. Zim preferred the darker, closed spaces that allowed him to think without the screaming of humans. Zim was the only one allowed to scream.

His elevator deposited him into his lab where a myriad of things in glass containment tubes, half-constructed weaponry, and various stolen earth items. Unfortunately for Zim, in the middle of the floor with a pool of filth spreading around him in the form of pizza boxes, wrappers, and torn-open trash-bags, was GIR.

The robot noticed him before he noticed the robot, and he screeched merrily, “HIYA THERE! I MADE A FUN PIT.”

“You made a mess.”

“That’s what I said!”

Zim snarled in disgust, “WHY IN THE LAB?”

“You gotta friend!” GIRL said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, and them promptly swallowed a can of soda in one bite. “Living room is clean for the friend.”

“Did you invite the delivery human in again?” Zim snapped,The two rooms appeared to be completely vacant, as he left them. One of the cameras was slightly obscured by a pipeline that had sagged into frame, and as he was moving it out of the way, he stopped, staring.

“Computer, enhance.”

The image was zoomed in and cleared of pixelation, now showcasing a very, very irken-shaped footprint, with punctures in the pipe where the claw-tips would be. Zim stared, perplexed- the footprint was much too large to be his, not to mention that he wore boots so that he didn’t risk stepping in puddles of various origin. 

“Identify.”

The computer  responded with a deep beep and a flash of red. “Unidentifiable. Not registered to Invader database.”

The irken’s already cold blood ran colder. He snapped to attention and began glancing around himself, but the only thing of immediate note was GIR swimming in his pile of trash. “Call the Tallests! Immediately! If there’s an invader in my base- not an Invader, like Zim, but an invader- OH, FORGET ABOUT IT. CALL THE TALLESTS.”

It displayed the world CALLING on screen for a few seconds before giving another deep error beep. “Unable to contact the Tallests. Connection unstable.”

“WHAT?”

“Unable to contact the Tallests. Conn-”

Zim snapped his teeth, summoning his PAK legs and allowing himself to be suspended mid-air. He chittered to himself, a bunch of nonsense words he wanted to let out of his throat before continuing, “I HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME. PAH! Stupid smelly human liquid planet, obscuring Zim’s only means of contact with a ROGUE in his base! A ROGUE! Jealous of Zim’s status, no doubt! Here to steal the plans for PHAYZTOOBEE and usurp his-”

Creak .

Zim pricked his antennae, but he didn’t have a chance to look up before something heavy landed directly on top of him. The weight struck directly center to his PAK, causing the mechanical legs to falter and calibrate as the PAK itself sent out a reset wave to make sure it wasn’t damaged. Panic and indignant anger bloomed in his head ,but before he had a chance to move and grapple for any number of weapons in his lab, the weight of his assailant forced him against the hard concrete floor.

The PAK legs retreated, much to his dismay, leaving him with one foot pressed against the back of his head and the other foot planted firmly on his wrist communicator. This rogue irken was at least twice as big as he was, and either smart enough to reset his PAK or clumsy enough to just happen to do that when falling out of his ceiling. 

“BAGH, FOOLISH DEFECT. WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ZIM?”

They said nothing, but pressed against his head uncertainly. 

He grinned bitterly. “At least let Zim see your crafty, evil face. If you weren’t a worthless rogue, you may have made a decent invader.”

“I’m not a rogue. You’re just an idiot.”

The assailant moved faster than Zim had expected, flipping him onto his back like he weighed no more than a feather. The breath nearly knocked out of him when he landed, but he attempted in vain to bring his wristwatch closer- another foot replanted itself onto the communicator, and the other stood firmly on his neck.

Standing on top of him, wearing a dark purple uniform that he didn’t recognize, was a fellow irken. He couldn’t see the color of their eyes behind the hard-light goggles they wore, and they appeared to hold no weapon, but they were hunched over and putting all their weight on his chest. Their skin had a slight blue tint to it as opposed to the normal yellow, and they were… tall. Perhaps the tallest non-invader he’d ever seen. No wonder they’d managed to reset his PAK in a single dive- they were dense .

GIR, who up until now had been completely lost in his own little word, announced shrilly, “FRIEND IS HERE!”

Chapter Text

“Your SIR unit needs to be fixed.” You snort bluntly at the irken pressed beneath your foot on the floor.

To be perfectly honest with yourself, you were still recalibrating from that fall that you most certainly had not meant to make- the chord you had been perching on top of snapped and you’d just gone with the gravity of the planet. The artificial gravity on the Massive was much lighter than this, and you felt so clumsy here.

“GIR!” Zim spat, wriggling and grasping at your ankle with his claws. “STOP DRINKING THAT HOT-DOG WATER AND ASSIST YOUR MASTER!”

You tossed a casual glance over at the robot in question, merely making sure that he wasn't going to start magically functioning as a SIR unit should. For a moment as his eyes flashed red, apprehension struck you.

“YES, MASTER!” His voice deepened and the little robot saluted stiffly before abruptly dawdling up to the lift while humming a song with no tune, leaving a trail of wrappers, coffee grounds, and general garbage in his wake.

Bewildered, you twitched your antennae in a questioning manner.

“Yes, he’s just like that.” Zim dropped his had back against the floor and growled, ruby eyes squinted shut and glistening with annoyance. Those eyes turned to you, and you became uneasy.

Emotion-dampener inactive. Activate, Y/N?

You thought for a moment, and pretended to be examining the irken head to toe- in reality, you were so checked out that you were barely comprehending things visually. Without much hesitation, you allowed the nodule to begin its work. 

The planet, Urth, was absolute sensory hell when compared to the Massive. There were many more irken there that screamed and bragged and made a general nuisance of themselves, yes, but you could go anywhere else nearly instantly there. It was temperature controlled, everything was spotless, there were plenty of things to provide stimulation, and you even had an add-on installed to your pod that let you simulate pressure to recharge yourself mentally when your PAK was updating itself or when you slept. Irken didn’t have to sleep, but it was something that you did for leisure and quiet’s sake.

Since waking up and getting plopped down into the area by your cruiser, you hadn’t considered to reactivate the dampener because you hadn’t been able to process the absolute overabundance of unfamiliar- dare you say, alien- stimuli. Between the smoggy atmosphere, the screaming populace, and the total lack of anything there to ground yourself with, you were running on empty as far as energy to comprehend things went. The most familiar place you’d managed to find was Zim’s lab, and that was solely because the technology was of irken make. You recognized almost none of it, however- you were no invader.

“Why have you broken into Zim’s lab, stink-baby? To steal his technology, his credit to the Tallests ?” He hissed, bringing you back to attention.

You didn’t say anything yet, giving your antennae another twitch. When you finally did have the energy, you weren’t entirely sure what to say… so you said that. “The Tallests told me to shut you up.”

He looked at you for a moment, confused, before bursting out into loud guffaws. “PHAHAHA! THE TALLESTS REQUIRE MANY AN UPDATE FROM THE WONDROUS ZIM! Your foolish, weak lies shall not affect me this day. A pitiful attempt indeed!”

Your antennae bobbed, “I’m… not lying. I severed your satellite cable.” You bluntly pointed toward a thick cable of wires and had been neatly sliced through with a precision laser.

Zim squinted upward past your head, and his eyes narrowed again. He’s so quick to turn from one emotion to another. Maybe he is defective. I still don’t think he threw the Massive into a Florpus-hole, but he could be annoying for… other reasons.

The body beneath your leg bucked again and you were almost knocked flat. Instead, your balance was thrown off and you wobbled backward before reversing your stance, unsure of what exactly Zim was going to try to pull. You were programmed to be able to run and remain undetected. Now, you were definitely detected and had nowhere to run, and with no idea how to fight to boot.

Zim wriggled out from beneath your foot and scrambled backwards so fast that he slammed his head on the table behind him, earning a bark of pain and a chitter of displeasure. You tensed, feeling like you should be doing something.

Why in the name of Irk was I the one sent on this stupid mission? I can’t even kill him, they didn’t give me clearance to.

He huffed and shook his head aggressively while springing to his feet, hunching forward and glaring at you. “YOU FOOLISH DEFECT PIG.” He snarled, and the robotic legs from his PAK began to reemerge. “YOUR LIES ARE PITIFUL AND YOUR TECHNIQUE EVEN WORSE. YOU WEREN’T EVEN AFFORDED A PROPER INVADER UNIFORM BEFORE YOU WERE CHASED FROM THE DECKS OF THE MASSIVE. HAH!”

You winced and hunkered down to a crouch- now you were almost to his level. Your claws flexed in their gloves, allowing you to feel the lined interior to focus on something. “You’ve really got to yell all the time?”

“YES!” Zim’s PAK legs elevated him off the ground while the irken looked through buttons on his control gauntlet, muttering to himself.

“Look, I told you: I’m not a rogue. I’m not even an invader. I don’t think what I am was even a thing when you were still on the Massive.” You shakily stood on your hind feet. Your eyes darted around the laboratory, trying to find something that would give you an idea, anything to jog your memory or give you direction. 

His claw struck a button and robotic arms descended from the ceiling, snaking around to face you before lunging. Panic pulsated through you and your body took over on auto-pilot. You sprung away to the left of yourself and sunk your claws into a seperate hanging wire, trying to lose them within the nest of cords and cables. Zim scoffed below you and 

His legs brought him forward to peer at you as you feebly tried to escape, barely conscious as the nodule tried to numb the fear and anxiety that you were feeling. The hammocks of cables around you began to vibrate and constrict.

“GIVE UP NOW, ROGUE FILTH! Perhaps Zim will be merciful and only dismember you slightly before surrendering you to the TALLESTS!”

Space confining- previous entry point null.

Oh, fantastic, the hole that you’d slipped into the house through was fully repaired. In addition to that, the faux-house boasted almost no ventilation-shafts that you could manage to pull yourself through. You whipped your head around, looking frantically for an exit that didn’t lead into the stupid vaccum tubes or into Zim’s claws… and, at the moment, you were finding none. Glancing down, the invader below you was watching smugly with his hands behind his back whilst suspended by his PAK’s legs. He took a few steps forward before bellowing in disgust and shaking one of the pincers- a taco wrapper fluttered off to the ground.

Admittedly, you were no fan of the massive amounts of bacteria that Urth boasted, and you were certainly no fan of the amount of garbage the defective SIR unit had brought with him into the base. He knew you were here- you’d even had a short conversation with him when you’d fallen through the roof (Falling through unstable ceilings was a specialty of yours, it seemed). In a way, you were glad you had encountered the robot before Zim- at the very least, you got a warning and a realization that he was of no danger to you at all. In a more obvious way, you despised the amount of contaminants that he trailed around behind himself… and it seemed that Zim did as well.

You didn’t know what would work, as this wasn’t your area of expertise, but you figured that the worst that could happen was that you’d scramble back up into the wire nest eventually. Crossing your fingers and letting your PAK do its work, you again dropped from the ceiling and put your full weight all toward one point- you hadn’t been aiming for his head originally, but it was what you ended up hitting.

Zim had tried to dodge out of the way, stunned, and perhaps guessed that you were attempting to snap his PAK into another reboot- in any case, he dodged forward to avoid you whilst turning, earning him your full weight directly to the center of his forehead. 

“GHEH-” 

He hardly had time to react before his Pak legs tumbled backward, attempting to steady the newfound heaviness, only to skitter and slide in the puddle of grease and paper and sending Zim crashing into the crush of slightly-wet garbage. When you’d landed safely, you sprung off of his head and landed not-so-neatly on one of his observation tables where he’d been taking something of human make apart (It appeared to be a toy, but you weren’t sure).

Oh wow- If I hadn’t had the dampener on, that would have been pretty sick!

Your antennae cocked forward and your eyes were zeroed in on him, waiting for him to move again. He was laying there, doing nothing but staring wide-eyed into the ceiling, when he suddenly started screaming at varying pitches and writhing. You winced and slicked your antennae against your head.

PAK, call the Almighty Tallests. I don’t know what to do here.

You held out your wrist communicator as Zim continued to flop and shriek on the floor-you couldn’t tell whether or not he was actually in pain or whether he was making a fuss. You figured that perhaps it was the latter, if any of the previous behavior you’d experienced in the past few minutes had anything to do with it.

INCOMING TRANSMISSION FROM… ALMIGHTY TALLESTS.

A small hologram, no bigger than a candy bar, appeared above your communicator, and in the flaky blue-tinted image was Tallest Purple looking as though he wasn’t aware of its presence at all. He glanced over into the ‘camera’ before groaning, and shortly thereafter shoving what looked to be chips into his mouth.

“Ugh. What do you want? Did you shut him up yet?”

“My Tallest-”

Purple visibly jumped and clamped his claws over his head, scattering whatever snack he’d been eating as the audio feed from your end of the call connected. “OH, SWEET IRK, WHAT IS THAT? DID YOU DO THAT?”

Mildly distressed but no-more than your PAK would allow, you attempted to speak over the screaming, “YEAH, yeah, I did, but what do you want me to do with him?”

“Whatever you’re doing seems to be working.” Tallest Red’s voice came from a few feet away from the feed.

“MY TA-A-AGH-ALLESTS-” Zim gurgled, finally seeming to have gotten himself out of the pile and while scratching viciously at his skin. “GAH, MY TALLESTS!”

You groaned, holding the communicator close to your chest, “Please give me a solid directive, my Tallests, I’m not authorized to ki-”

“Did you sever his communicator?” Purple  said at slightly-higher-than-normal volume, his eyes nearly squinted shut and his antennae flush with his head.

“Ye-yeah, yes,” You fumbled your words, the amount of sheer noise that Zim was producing making it rather difficult for you to gather yourself enough to speak. “He can’t call you any… He can’t call. I’m on my-mine.”

“MY TALLESTS! THIS DEFECT IRKEN HAS ATTEMPTED TO ENTER MY BASE AND… uh… USURP MY OUTPOST OF URTH! YES, AND TO STEAL AND PIRATE ZIM’S WONDROUS PLANS!” He snatched at the communicator on your wrist, grasping at your glove with his thorn-sharp claws. He was gasping and gaping at the hologram, wide-eyed, “ZIM WILL DISPOSE OF IT! DOES THIS PLEASE THE TALLESTS?”

White noise was beginning to take up residence in your skull. You felt as though you were slipping a little to the left of your own body- you were still there, you could sort-of feel the grip on your wrist and sort-of hear the screaming, but it was almost as though you were no longer a part of it physically.

Purple was glaring at both you and Zim through the hologram, “If you’ve severed his communicator, don’t call us back until you’ve dealt with him. If he’s still screaming, you failed. Jerk.”

It auto-closed and you were left with Zim gripping your arm, looking flabbergasted at the dead-air where the Tallests should be. You were still a little bit unable to register the fact that you were still inside your own body, staring numbly at the fellow irken through your goggles while he was mercifully quiet. His eyes snapped back toward you looking almost angry, instead making him look much more perplexed. 

“Eh? What’s wrong, rogue? Do you not register the SIGHT of the mighty ZIM? You heard your Tallests command you! Deal with me!”

He let go of your wrist, nearly prompting you completely back to reality. Your antennae began to vibrate and wiggle, finally starting to register the sound around you. Zim stood a few feet back, hunched over and looking smug, ready to spring. You blinked and rubbed your head while the nodule in the PAK began to administer itself at a more consistent rate. 

Zim laughed cruelly, bearing his pink teeth at you. “COME ON! I DESERVE TO BE DEALT WITH, PAHA!”

You sighed and hopped gently from the table, almost resigned to being captured should he decide to jump at you. He didn’t, however, merely watching you as you moved with way too much attentiveness for how slow you were being. 

What’s he so excited about? His antennae are going wild. Then again, he looks… unhinged.

The nest of wires on the ceiling was still an option for exit, you supposed, but you felt as though you needed some time to… regroup. You had no plan, you had no pod-mates, and you had no patience or energy left to deal with this now that he wasn’t actively trying to cage you. In fact, you weren’t really sure of… what he was doing, other than bracing for a fight that wouldn’t come.

Zim’s aggressive posture lessened and he shifted his weight, “HEY. Rogue-defect-trash-baby? Deal with me. The Tallests told you to. Can you even hear Zim?”

“Hm?”

“Eugh. Come back when you are ready to face Zim in combat. A challenge would be appreciated, you are pathetic as of this moment.”

Your antennae twitched forward- he’s just going to let you walk out of the base? That was just fine with you, but it was… odd, to say the least. “What do you-”

“Your brain is improperly stimulated for this if you cannot even follow the commands of the Tallests. GO! Zim requires a CHALLENGE! Deal with Zim when you find yourself able to comprehend his presence.” The invader stood on his toes and shooed you away with his eyes closed, looking not-very amused and still grubby from rolling in the garbage pile.

Needless to say, you complied without much fuss, more confused than you’d ever been in your entire life. You didn’t do well without concrete orders- usually assignment drones could easily direct you, give you proper activities and things to do, and usually your mission had an objective that could be reached. You could not, however, simply shatter Zim like the glass-cannon that he seemed to be- you weren’t permitted by your programming to do that on purpose. You didn’t even think it would let you pre-meditate the idea.

Exiting Zim’s base was the easy part (Much easier through the front door, actually), but as soon as you stepped outside beneath the darkening sky and into the water-logged world, you realized you hadn’t set up a proper base yourself… and now that you thought about it, had not been given the equipment to make one. You growled to yourself and crouched on the stoop while glaring out into the human city. Smog and dim lights filled the air, as well as the ungodly amount of noise . 

No wonder that goblin is so comfortable here- he fits right in.

“Computer, find someplace quiet and dry.” Your voice was soft and weak whilst you commanded the gauntlet, glancing only half-heartedly at the grid-like city set-up displayed before you. 

Library will do.

You took a moment to comprehend the area around you, count certain human things and poor-excuses-for-human-things in Zim’s yard. It was a little grounding technique, nothing fancy, but it helped you in stranger environments like this one. Taking your first steps into the world after your landing, you discovered that there was a reason that Zim wore full-boots- the water burned the bottoms of your feet. You’d gathered that the water could be dangerous for the level of your body temperature, as irken were cold-blooded creatures, but the destructive-capability it had to your molecules was surprising , to say the least.

Hissing and hopping from foot to foot, you dashed out into the dark street and slipped into the shadows, mindlessly weaving your way through the human suburbs and toward the library, which was blessedly a few streets over. For a moment as you left Zim’s base, you heard the not-so-soft slap of footsteps against wet concrete and the shaking of a bush, but you quickly outran whoever it was when you leapt over a fence in an effort to more quickly arrive at your destination. 

Once in the shadows, you finally felt yourself able to think. Stealth was what you were good at, being quiet and sneaky and unnoticed. Though the soles of your feet burned from the water and your body temperature was getting lower with the colder air, you felt much more relaxed despite the absolutely alien environment. 

You scaled another wooden fence and landed neatly atop a human transport vehicle, peering around you and spotting the library in the distance. As you made your way toward it, your mind wandered to a few things that Zim had oh-so-eloquently hissed at you before you left.

He seems really… transfixed that the Tallests wanted him ‘dealt’ with. Probably an ego thing I guess. I wasn’t really awake enough to consider it in his lab but god, he was kind of a jerk. 

The brick building greeted you with no lights and not a single vehicle in the parking-lot. Luckily, it also greeted you with plenty of infiltratable vents at reachable levels. Getting into the library was much easier than falling into Zim’s roof, you had to say. You even managed to land on your feet and tumble into the building, which was made of cold smooth marble and had a lot of big open space. As someone who spent a lot of time creeping through buildings you weren’t supposed to be in, big open space meant big roofs with lots of wiggle room to move around in.

You managed to pilfer a few things from the area where the human children seemed to gather, mostly mats and a few pillows, and climbed expertly into the roof after scaling the wall and wiggling into another vent. The attic was quiet and dark, barely lit… it was practically perfect, if a little cold.

Irken didn’t need to sleep as a rule- your PAKs did everything for you to keep you awake- but it was an activity you rather enjoyed to regain some energy. You’d address the numerous problems tomorrow morning, or whenever you woke up. 

After making a crude nest out of the abused pillows and mats, you settled into a sleeping position and removed your goggles. You nearly closed your eyes when you heard a beep from your gauntlet- it was a message on a communication app called IrkMe, usually shared between commanders and their charges.

Squinting weakly, you nearly didn’t believe the footnote message that came with the friend request. 

ZIM WOULD LIKE TO KEEP AN EYE ON YOU SO THAT HE MAY HAVE A DECENT DEALING WITH. ACCEPT.

You snorted before tucking your arms beneath your body, and allowed your mind to shut off for the evening.

Chapter Text

You’ve got mail. You’ve got mail. You’ve got mail.

Your face wrinkled as you rolled over in your hastily constructed nest, the attic of the library a cozy insulated warm temperature that was practically perfect for napping in. Before you could settle back in to some equally uncomfortable position on the hard wooden rafters and un-lined building material, the communicator on your wrist buzzed aggressively again.

You sprawled on your back and stared at the ceiling with your eyes half-shut. You’d have to pilfer some actual bedding later- these busted-up yoga mats and pillows weren’t going to cut it. Rocking forward and sitting up with your legs curled close to your body, you brought the communicator close to check the beeping.

Perhaps if you were more awake, you would have felt more dread or disdain, but as it stood, you weren’t nearly as phazed by the 99+ spam messages from Zim as you should have been. 

Most of them were the same rigamarole as he’d sent last night, demanding to be dealt with and threatening to locate and dismember you if you refused to do so in a timely manner. You tilted your head and ran your claws over your antennae a few times, feeling them spring back into their default resting position. Once done with that, you promptly deleted every sent message. The last one, sent eight prior, indicated that Zim would be gone for an undisclosed amount of time, attending an earth convention of some sort called…’ skool’. 

Whatever, more time to think about just what it was you were supposed to be doing. You always had the least-helpful-orders in the world from your Tallests, and absolutely nothing else.

You lean down onto all fours and stretch each limb individually, wriggling your claws and toes and hearing your spine pop. Another beep sounded up from your wrist.

Annoyed, you nearly deleted it before you saw it wasn’t another associate-request or demanding message.

Incoming message from: ACQUISITOR VITZ

Heya, Ducky- if my calculations are right (they are) you should have landed on Urth by now… so hey.

You doin’ ok?

You loped toward one of the exit vents, listening out to the human world lurking just outside of the poorly-insulated marble wall and wondering if you should respond. 

ACQUISITOR (Y/N): Yeah, I’m here. My arrival was… weird. I actually got into his base first try.

Slithering into vents and out of the building was even easier in the morning. The sun that this particular planet had barely broke through the dense clouds of smoke and pollution, bathing the landscape around you in a sickly washed-out yellow/green. Few and far between the different buildings and vehicles were humans, all of them being some manner of absolutely disgusting. 

You shivered, and began slinking through the bushes again.

ACQUISITOR VITZ: I mean, yeah, if you didn’t, I’d be worried about your past and future as an acquisitor. I guess if you aren’t on the way back, you still haven’t killed him?

ACQUISITOR (Y/N): You couldn’t hear it, but I just scoffed so hard that I almost blew my cover. I don’t even know why I’m here, he has a SIR unit so busted, he should have been dead as soon as he touched down. The thing keeps like… gathering garbage that we’re allergic to. Or he’s allergic to? Either way, he should be dead already, he’s survived on dumb luck.

One quick glance around you had you fairly confident that the neighborhood was so deserted at this time of day that as long as you walked around upright, nobody would care whether or not you were an alien. Even if that was probably true, you opted to leap spryly onto the fence and use it to walk back up toward Zim’s base instead. Now that things were much less wet, you were getting more of a feel for the terrain of the planet- a lot of hard, manufactured stone, uncared-for plant life, and such high levels of smog that you were glad that your PAK kept your nutrients in balance- you could get all of your minerals in one breath here.

You passed several humans, some asleep and some awake- those that were awake didn’t seem to care about the decently-sized thing skittering nimbly across a wooden fence. So few cared, in fact, that you almost overshot the distance you travelled and catapulted into one of Zim’s ‘support houses’.

With an awkward yelp, you landed sideways in one of the bushes and dug your nails into the ground to steady yourself.

ACQUISITOR VITZ: If you can think of some way to make sure that a little ‘accident’ happens, please take that action. It’s so boring here. I know you just got out of stasis like yesterday, but you’ve been gone for six orbits- the Massive has hardly moved, even! You’ve gotta see the food I’ve been able to steal! And some other stuff, ya know, gauntlets and space swords too, I guess.

Your eyes close in an irken smile as you hunker for a moment in the dappled shadows of the bush- it was perhaps the most of an emotion you’d felt in about 36 hours. This would be a simple job, you hoped, even if it were technically more difficult for you because it was very much not your area of expertise. Zim, at this point, had appeared to be half dead anyway, or was on the road to being as such at the very least. 

If you minded your own business and stayed in Zim’s general area, you’d probably be back on the Massive before you knew it!

That was the last thought that ran through your head before something tackled you from behind and started trying to choke you. A sharp knife of panic stabbed at your stomach as a hiss escaped your mouth, drawing up all of your limbs and reaching behind you with one arm.

Your assailant squealed as you raked against hair and flesh, the unsupported weight of your body slowing them down significantly. Once you actually started pulling against the arm that was clamped around your neck, you found that they weren’t actually that strong- you might have mistaken them for Zim if they’d been crowing about their greatness every second they got. The sun was bright and hot in your eyes, and suddenly you were very, very aware of the myriad of sound around you that you were previously able to tune out. The screaming humans, the vehicles, the wildlife, and last but not least, the assailant- all of it seemed to be reaching your antennae at once.

They hacked and started rambling incoherently, leaving you only able to make out things like ‘they keep getting stronger’ and ‘OW, GOD’. Even as they tried to drag you backward onto the front sidewalk, you managed to dig your claws into their arm and rip outward hard- fabric tore, as did skin, and the attacker released you with another squeal of pain.

You rolled away and landed on all fours, eyes squinted nearly closed and your antennae bristling harshly- the amount of sound was so overwhelming that you could barely see, even with your eyes open. “Shut up, SHUT UP, URTH DEMON.” Your claws were tearing at the grainy pavement- you didn’t even notice the blood dotting the tips. It wasn’t much anyway, maybe a pinprick’s worth.

The attacker fell mostly silent, still whimpering and complaining under their breath and holding their arm. They didn’t run away or toward you, but instead held their ground and watched for your move. You shook your head from side to side as everything buzzed at once- was your PAK not responding to your distress signals? You couldn’t bring yourself to check right now.

You pressed one antennae against your head with one claw, the other still pushed forward and taking in altogether-too-much sound- it didn’t even occur to you that you might actually look somewhat menacing with your eyes narrow, your teeth bared, and your claws flexing angrily as you slouched above the attacker.

The attacker was momentarily stunned by the physical display, “They just keep getting worse .”

“SHUT UP.” You snapped, lurching forward.

They took a step back, but still held their ground. Through what little you could see, it was one of the adolescent forms of the earth natives, mostly covered in a black flowy coat. They were eyeing you warily with equal amounts of animosity and perplexed-ness, the hazy sunlight reflecting off of their scuffed glasses. 

“What do you want? Piss off.” You growled in as steady a voice as you could manage, skirting around the human child and backing towards the sides of the yard- and though you hadn’t noticed, the gnome cameras had been watching you intently.

“Why are you in Zim’s bushes? Are you with the armada? Another irken come for revenge on Zim and Earth??” The child barked, the volume rising with each succeeding accusation. “OR, given how you actually managed to throw me, A COMPETENT REPLACEMENT AFTER SUCH A CATASTROPHIC FAILU-”

“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU- SHUT UP, I CAN’T SEE.” You spit in response, taking one warning bound toward them again and chittering deep in your chest.

The child yelped and fell backward, scrambling a few feet back whilst still trying to hold their wounded arm.

Animalistic silence overtook you both for one moment, you ready to spring at the slightest provocation and with the child looking like they were too petrified to move. After a minute or so of hostile glaring and staring, they spoke again.

“... Irken can get overstimulated?” The tone was less accusatory and more cautious.

It took you a moment to recognize what he said. Your lip peeled up again as you released the antennae, attempting to ease yourself back into at least some part of the environment. “We have brains, don’t we?”

“If Zim is supposed to be some kinda example, then I really wouldn’t know.”

You snort, still shaking your head from time to time. 

The child’s voice dripped with disdain, “What are you doing here, space-bug ?”

You don’t quite have the spoons for a sassy retort, so you respond flatly,  “Zim’s an idiot and the Tallests want him dead.”

The bluntness of your response seems to take them aback, a shocked expression covering their face for a moment before it morphs into something devious. “You were on the roof last night- when Zim got home from skool, you were trying to break into his house.”

“I broke into his house. I even disabled his communication system.”

They rolled over onto their knees and managed to stand, coming closer but still with the uninjured shoulder facing you. “He’s been complaining about it all day- sounds like you busted it up so bad he can’t fix it. You were in there for less than an hour, how’d you do that?”

A cold feeling settled in your stomach, your own pit of disdain, “Were you watching me?”

The child nodded as if they were proud of that fact, almost daring you to protest. 

Instead, you snarled again, “Who are you?”

“DIB, SON OF PROFESSOR MEMBRANE AND EARTH’S LAST LINE OF DEFENSE AGAINST THE EVIL ALIEN ARMADA!”

You flinched shortly before lunging forward and raking at him with your claws, another loud chitter leaving your throat. Dib yelped again and tiptoed back, narrowly missing being struck.

“The armada doesn’t want anything to do with your stupid garbage planet, they just want Zim dead.” You hiss, glancing around yourself out of muscle-memory.

“Yeah. I kinda figured. After the Florpus thing, anyway.” Dib closed his eyes and nodded, almost as if he expected the answer. 

You looked at him incredulously, wondering if you could afford to try ripping the stupid weird hair off of his head to get him to leave you be- how did one little human change volume so fast?

He pointed one finger at you, causing you to aggressively flinch back, “And after you’re done getting rid of Zim?”

“I leave and get back to the Massive.”

He squints at you, “You just up and leave? No takeover of Earth, no enslavement of the human race?”

Why in Irk’s name were you bartering with a human child to leave you alone? By all means, if your programming allowed, you could have just killed him and been done with it. You growl low in response, crouched on all fours and balanced on your haunches.

“I just want to go home. Your planet sucks.”

Dib glares at you, then glances at the looming irken base behind you. “I don’t trust you.”

You snort and decide that you’ve had enough of this interaction, standing and loping toward the door. You hear the kid’s footsteps approaching behind you fast again, and you whirl around on your heels to snarl as loudly as you can into his face, still overstimulated and very irritated.

Dib tried to give a muffled scream but held it in his throat as you loomed over him. “I get Zim gone, you get out and we never see another irken on this planet again?”

“Yes, you absolute moron, we want nothing to do with Urth.”

He searches your goggles for a moment before becoming either bored or intimidated, and instead holds out his right hand- it just so happened to be the one you shredded. You look between his hand and his face before turning around and heading back, walking towards Zim’s door.

“Wash that, it’s gonna get infected.”

Chapter Text

It had been perhaps two weeks since you landed on Urth, and you still had no human disguise. Zim had one, of course, that was so hastily constructed you had no idea how he’d not been found out. Using hard light was so simple, you had no clue why he opted for a wig and contacts that almost didn’t cover his entire eye.

As it stood, you felt sneaky enough to not have to use a disguise- in fact, you’d developed a formula. Sleep during the daytime and stay indoors, and during the night when the temperature cooled off and everything was blessedly quieter, you could start moving around- hell, you could practically strut around the street and pretend you were a human… which you might have done once or twice to try out (it wasn’t worth it).

An added bonus to operating during the night-time was that you were less likely to encounter the human child… less likely. Dib (he said he was a boy, which you readily accepted- much like irken, there was little to no sexual dimorphism in humans that you’d noticed and they all kind of looked the same to you) was a persistent little rat bastard who had done nothing in aiding your mission thus far, but it was nice to have someone to talk to, you guessed. He didn’t aid in your need for sneakiness and quiet, however, instead most of the time opting to ask you vaguely-accusatory questions that you weren’t allowed to or didn’t want to answer.

And Zim had… noticed. It wasn’t exactly like you were trying to be unseen by him - you already knew your way into his base, and the robot would answer the door if the hole in the roof was reinforced. He absolutely knew you were here, it was just that most of your time spent here involved watching and waiting. Not being programmed to be able to kill as a default proved to be just as annoying as you had thought it would be.

You couldn’t even begin to wonder what was going on inside of Zim’s mind, but you at least had a barebones guess- this was either an ego trip, or he was so delusional about his utterly catastrophic failure that he wanted to die rather than be reprogrammed by a Control Brain. But someone like Zim would never admit that, now would he?

He hadn’t been taking kindly to Dib’s increased presence around his base, which was apparently already a lot. You gathered that even though every interaction you had with him started with him yelling that you were a filthy rogue that even Urthlings wanted nothing to do with, Zim felt a vague sense of camaraderie with you just by virtue of being an irken. You didn’t particularly feel the same way, but it was a hollow comfort to be allowed near irken technology.

In any case, it was the only two-and-two you could put together that may explain Zim’s absolutely horrendous displeasure that you were conversing with the human child. It wasn’t exactly as though it was a walk in the park for you either- he’d choked you out and had been harassing you ever since.

The only solace you were able to find was in your nest you’d built in the library a few streets over. Pilfering was your forte, and pilfering from the local populace was easier than a training simulation. The planet was so disenfranchised and stupid that simply existing normally as an irken made you feel lke a genuis by comparison- you wondered if Zim felt the same way, and then wondered if he’d let it go to his head.

Your little cubbyhole now boasted a double-sided blanket, stolen memory-foam mats, a wide assortment of strange human snack foods (All of which Zim chided you for stealing from his house, boasting that your own stupidity would kill you before he ever had a chance to), and oodles of paper that you shredded with your claws from time to time. It was technically a fire hazard, but it was your fire hazard; it also happened to be the only thing giving you some semblance of a home on this wretched rock of a planet.

Routine was also something that made you feel at least a little better. To humans, there was a seven-day period of time called a week- for five out of seven of these days, Zim attended something called SKOOL. The great and mighty Zim must infiltrate the populace. Where as filthy rogues like yourself simply avoid it, Zim becomes a part of it to steal their most important secrets , ohhhhhh yes. The end of the cycle was marked by a small celebration by the younger human spawn in which they congregated in one place or in one of their houses and made general nuisances of themselves. Zim bragged that he no longer had to participate in such activities with humans now that another irken, even if it were a ‘horrible insult to the Tallests’ like yourself, had arrived on Urth. 

What he’d meant was something more akin to ‘visit my base every human Fry-day, and I will become less aggressive in messaging you constantly for status reports on how you shall deal with me’. That, however, was not what he had said, and you were not an intuitive irken. You finally gathered that it would be less painful to pay his base a visit and be nosy once per week rather than have him come to your hidey-hole and make an absolute nuisance of himself after he had done just that.

A sigh of boredom left you as you loped across the sidewalk, regarding Zim’s base as if it were no more interesting than any other human structure. You’d only recently managed to pry yourself out of your nest despite nightfall having happened a few hours ago. It was only marginally more quiet than daytime, but it was just enough that it did put you at ease- dark and less-noisy were an environment you could easily move through if things went badly, but at this point you didn’t think they would. It was a planet of morons, Zim included, and even if you were somehow more checked-out than you already were, you could escape with ease and return to shenanigans the very next day.

Your antennae twitched back and forth as a metronome does. How doesn’t he die of boredom every day of his life here? Everything is the same every day, that kid keeps trying to break into his house, his SIR unit is busted- if I were him, I’d practically want to be taken out.

The gnomes in his front yard were trained on you while you walked up the sidewalk and perched on the stoop. Something behind the door fell and Zim yelled something practically unintelligible before he jerked open the door. He crouched forward as if he wanted to be on all fours, same as you.

He had already taken his disguise off and was glaring at you with his bright ruby eyes, his teeth showing slightly in something almost like a smile. “Were you followed?”

Your antennae bobbed about, and a few seconds later you were able to process the question. “No. The human child isn’t here tonight. He didn’t even intercept me on the way over.”

Zim let out a boisterous guffaw, prompting you to flinch back. “PAH! Perhaps he is learning. You are taller than him, he recognizes the status of your tallness.”

“Thank you?”

He opened the door and backed out of the way to allow you inside. You entered passively, still not having shaken the strange feeling that you were about to be nabbed or destroyed or dismembered- it would be easier if he would just do that and get it over with. Easier than trying to snap the programming in my PAK anyway.

The door slammed and you flinched again, nearly flattening yourself against the ground completely. 

Zim stopped and stared at you with a puzzled scowl on his face, “Why do you do that?”

You slicked your antennae against your head and stood upright while adjusting the brightness-detection of your goggles so that the room was a little less glaring, “Do what?”

“COWER! You cower and flinch away from noises- Zim knows of his greatness and how staggering it is, but you are so cowardly for someone so tall.” It sounded less like an insult and more like an observation.

You swiped at your antennae with a claw like a cat cleaning its ears- you guessed you were, sort of. “You’re very loud. The world, in general, is very loud. Sometimes it’s too much stimuli to process at once- when I have difficulty processing that stimuli, my PAK runs my acquisitor programming automatically. Sometimes when there’s too much, it… hurts. And that means when loud noises happen, I flinch and get ready to run.”

The latter parts of the speech had been rehearsed to many an irken who didn’t understand or thought the same thing. Most of the time, you were scoffed at or dismissed, but more rarely, you were called defective. It wasn’t your fault, and there were others like you- sometimes programming got scrambled that way. But being slightly different in the irken empire? A crime that was practically unforgivable.

Lucky I’m so useful, you thought bitterly.

Zim peered at you momentarily before deciding that the explanation was satisfactory. “Yes. Understandable.” It was perhaps the shortest thing he had ever said to you.

He strutted across his living room as if he were dismissing your presence before snapping his head in your direction again. “Well? How are you dealing with Zim?”

“I… can’t. If I could, I wouldn’t still be here.”

His eyes flashed and he glared in annoyance and challenge, “Lies.”

Has… has he stopped yelling? He normally shrieks one-word answers.

You tilted your head toward him and crossed your arms, swaying side to side gently- it took you a moment, but once he also started shifting his weight from foot to foot, you realized he was mimicking your movements. The flow of his antennae was more rigid and less fluid, but he was definitely moving in the same way you were. 

“You won’t listen even when I tell you why. Can we talk about something else?”

He grunts dismissively, but doesn’t protest. “The worm-baby, Dib.”

Again, you wipe at your antennae- Zim follows suit. “... are you choosing that as the subject?”

“He makes quite a nuisance of himself to Zim.” he said bluntly.

The couch had begun to look more comfortable than simply standing and awkwardly talking at him. These odd, odd ‘visits’ had only begun fourteen days prior, and they felt more like status reports than anything else. You moved nimbly to the couch and settled into it in one swift motion- it was ten times less comfortable than first thought.

Your fellow irken blinked and took a few steps closer, “He has been… troublesome since my arrival.”

“When did you arrive?”

Zim thinks for a moment and puts his claws to his mouth. “Hm. Two orbits ago. Humans measure the time by the sun instead of total galactic rotation. Stupid.”

You gawked at him, your mouth opening slightly, “You’ve been here two whole orbits? By yourself?”

He stood up as if he was proud and smiled in a very irken way- the same as you had done shortly before being ripped from the bushes by a human larvae. “Indeed! Irken resilience never fails. It is why we are superior.”

You nodded in agreement, “Humans are a worthless species. Their planet even more worthless, considering what they’ve done to it. At least if we did it, we’d do it neater.”

Zim paused for a moment before laughing maniacally, louder than he had been speaking but not too much louder than his normal voice. “The first truthful thing to come out of your mouth, rogue! HAH!”

“Zim?”

“Yes, rogue?”

“I can show you what I am in the armada database. I’m not a rogue.”

Zim’s laughing halted quickly and he looked at you, perplexed, “Your file will have been deleted, rogue. But yes, show Zim what you are.”

Your claws flittered over your communication device, sorting through holograms and spam, before settling on an informational file.

GREETINGS FROM THE ALMIGHTY TALLESTS, FAITHFUL IRKEN SOLDIERS

WE ARE BEGINNING TO UNVEIL THE NEWEST, GREATEST, SNEAKIEST IRKEN YET… drumroll. What do mean we don’t have a drumroll over text? I knew we should have announced this.

THE ALMIGHTY TALLESTS UNVEIL: THE ACQUISITOR!

Sneaky, sly, quiet, and faultlessly functional, this new branch of our fanTASTIC ARMADA will have one of the most important jobs of all- STEALING STUFF FOR US!

There have already been smeet programmed as the first wave of acquisitors, BUT THIS COULD BE YOU! Just sign up at any reassignment terminal, and you MIGHT just get to steal stuff for US, your ALMIGHTY TALLESTS!

End the message. End-end the message, I hate voice to te-

You poked the image enclosed among the text of the hologram, and it expanded into something more akin to an anatomical chart. Zim had since sidled up next to you on the couch and leaned over your shoulder, eyes wide as he read each of the displayed bullet points.

“You? You’re one of those?” He poked at the hologram, reading each of the displayed bullet points as he slid around the image.

“Mhm. We get a neat little uniform and everything.”

Zim turned to you as you closed the device, his brow furrowed, “You wanted to be one? Instead of a mighty invader, you chose to spend your time slinking around in the shadows?”

A pit of cold resentment formed inside you- where did this little moron get off on being so judgemental? Your eyes narrowed and you growled, which seemed to not faze Zim a bit. “I was made as an acquisitor. We don’t waste our time trying to get blown up or taking over garbage planets.”

His antennae slicked down and his shoulders cocked back. “What do you imply, worm?”

A wave of indignance had begun to boil within you, but you felt your PAK suddenly come to life. Spike in emotion detected. Administer numbing agent: Y/N?

Yes.

The tingling that spread with the administering of the chemical felt almost cold, but more than anything it felt calming. Even if it was just the feeling of cold and not the actual chemical being dispensed, the sensation itself gave you a Pavlovian sense of comfort.

Zim was waiting expectantly for your answer whilst also looking as though he were about to shatter if he clenched his muscles any harder than he was.

Your antennae were flat and limp against your head again, “I like being an acquisitor. I’m good at it.”

He seemed disappointed with your sudden lack of aggression, a scowl settling onto his face. He growled deep from within his throat as if he were going to speak, but said nothing further, instead turning to the gigantic blank monitor and stewing in his lessening rage.

“Computer, turn on the screen.” he spat, his arms crossed.

You had no idea where this sudden bout of self control came from. It was confusing, to say the least, but not unwanted- the yelling had been one of the most obnoxious things you had ever experienced. This whole planet was full of people who wouldn’t stop yelling for no good reason. Now you sat next to the target of a would-be assassination who was pratically boiling, but had actively stopped himself from yelling, and you were wondering why exactly you were still here and if any of this mattered in the least.

A glance spared in his direction showed that Zim was doing better than he had been, but only marginally. He no longer looked as though he were about to explode and now just looked annoyed.

“What do you want to watch?” You asked, blinking slowly and trying to absorb some of the silence around you.

He chittered to himself before begrudgingly replying, “Angry Monkey.”

The monitor obeyed without even being commanded. You couldn’t really pay that much attention to the program whilst you thought about so much else, but Zim seemed preoccupied at the very least. He still didn’t look happy, but he was more… tolerable. It dawned on you that the situation was strangely domestic, but you didn’t know what to do with that information, so you let it sit where it was.

“Hmm.”

“What, worm?”

“Thank you for not yelling as loud.”

Zim turned to look at you, as if checking you for any amount of detectable sincerity. You passed his test, it seemed, and he huffed dismissively. “If ZIM must be the only voice of reason on this barbaric planet, he will.”

You settled back into the uncomfortable, scratchy couch, nearly curling up completely at one point, and went quiet for almost the rest of the visit. Despite Zim having tried to kill you last week, he was unfortunately correct: this was the most civilly you’d been treated your entire visit.

Before I get out of here, I’m gonna find out what you’re about.