Serum: Ch1 Invader Zim Fanfic

Serum

Chapter 1:
The Unsuspecting Victim, of Darkness in the Valley


Story Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer:  Jhonen Vasquez totally pwns me!  If he wanted to come to my apartment PERSONALLY and repossess a few of my belongings to atone for the abuse of his creations I’d have no problems with that...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


                The walk to skool that morning left the diminutive Irken feeling miserably tired and, not for the first time in recent weeks, wishing he had an Earth car.  In addition to the 7 mile distance between his home and the Hi-skool, he’d also spent the better part of an hour before departing the base scrubbing caked on oatmeal off of Gir.
                “You need a nap!” Gir tittered.
                Zim paused mid trudge and looked back to his companion from half way up the skool steps.  “I do NOT need a nap.  If you hadn’t decided to make that disgusting oatmeal with a laser and a pressure cooker-”
                “Then you need tuna” the little robot interrupted.  He held a can of the aforementioned fish toward his master.
                “Why did you follow me here Gir?” The only response he received was a vacant grin as Gir continued holding the can outstretched toward him.  “I don’t need tuna.  What I need is...”  Sighing, Zim accepted the tuna from the little robot.  “What I need is for you to hurry back to the base.  Do you remember when I told you that the gnomes stopped working?  And how you were going to get to be a ferocious guard dog just like on TV?”  At this Gir nodded enthusiastically.  “Well if you go and pretend to be a guard dog until I get back we’ll get some tacos and find somewhere to watch the Scary Monkey Show.”
                “TACOS!!”
                Zim watched as Gir bounded off like a little green dog back in the direction they’d come from before continuing up the steps and entering the skool.  He was greeted by a nearly empty hallway and a clock announcing the time to be only 7:04.  ‘Still nearly half an hour before the majority of the worm babies will start arriving.’  Zim had learned early on that it was to the advantage of the smallest members of society to be well out of the way when the larger ones all started herding in one place.  And being more than 2 feet shorter than the smallest human attending skool he had taken to roaming the hallways only extremely early or exceedingly late to avoid being trampled.
                The green skined senior trudged to his locker and made his way toward his English classroom.  As usual the room was empty and dark as he entered it but Zim didn’t even notice as he sank bonelessly into his seat.  Resting his forehead on the cool surface of the desk he quickly lost himself in his thoughts...

                It was nearly 30 minutes before the silence of the classroom was disrupted.  The soft clicking of heels and a sudden brightness as the light was flipped on, assaulting Zim’s unblinking eyes, brought him back to his senses.  He mustered enough energy to shift his head and watch as the English teacher pulled open a drawer of her desk and placed a stack of paperwork into it.  Still unaware of the Irken’s presence the woman continued on to spray a fine mist onto a pair of the moth orchids she had in ornate pots on her desk.  It wasn’t until she’d seated herself to wait for the students to start trickling in that she noticed an instantly recognizable form slumped in a desk looking at her.
                “Early again hon?”  Met with a silent nod she went on.  “What did you think of yesterday’s assigned reading?  Tell me what you thought of Poe.”
                ‘Poe was a deranged she-bitch that was too tall for her brain.  And the only reason she ever got such a cushy assignment on the Vortian military research station was because thinking up new ways to kill things was all that morbid mind of hers was good at.’   Shaking his head a bit at the random memory Zim gathered together his thoughts of the dead Earth poet.  
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                As the day progressed the alien found himself struggling.  The weak feeling never left him and he was constantly finding himself drifting away from conscious thought.  Even his nemesis now noticed his abnormally sluggish behavior, grinning nastily in Zim’s direction as often as he could.  
                But the most unnerving moment of the morning came during the end of calculus when he’d had to sit through several panicked minutes when his translation chip suddenly stopped functioning.  ‘I shouldn’t have tried to keep attending until the end of the week!’  he thought, trying desperately to drown out the sounds that the humans used to communicate with his own thoughts.  ‘I should be back at the base with Gir!  I..I should be trying to get the communications back online!   I should be getting the Voot operational!’  A familiar feeling of weariness overtook him at these thoughts and his squeedly spooch churned painfully.  ‘It’s happening too fast.  I don’t want to die.  I don’t want to die... I don’t want to die!’  Zim continued the mental mantra until the lecture suddenly began making sense again.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

End chapter 1, and the plot thickens.  Next chapter it’s back to Dib.