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The Irken Anatomy	By : ladylaguna Category: +G through L > Invader Zim > AU/AR-Alternate Universe-Alternate Reality Views: 4135 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Zim and all related characters - Viacom... All unrelated characters � Jenn L. No profit is gained from this writing.

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Desolation greeted Vermeil as his ship gingerly touched down on the planet’s surface. No vegetation, no vehicular activity, no space port. The buildings that made up the main complex were low to the ground and heavily fortified.

If an Irken actually dwelled in this place, she’d made an excellent choice.

He approached slowly, guns at the ready but safely tucked in their harnesses. A low brick wall ran around the perimeter of the complex. As he approached the gate, he heard the telltale clicks of weapons being cocked.

A hooded figure appeared over the top of the wall and pointed a long-barreled gun in Vermeil’s direction.

“An Irken! What business do you have with us?”

They hadn’t automatically blown him away. That bade well. He decided to be honest. “I came here searching for… Lapis.”

He heard hushed, urgent voices. The gun continued to stare him down.

None said a word to him. He waited, completely still, hands aloft.

And waited.

And waited.

Twenty minutes passed before the gate finally opened. Another hooded figure approached him; he could see a long reptilian tail sliding from underneath. That did not bode well.

“Who else is with you?” the figure asked. Its voice sounded feminine.

Shaking his head, Vermeil tried to find its eyes somewhere in the darkness. “None. I am alone… You can come to my ship and see for yourself.”

She wasn’t interested in that. “Who knows you are here?”

“Only one,” Vermeil replied. Enough, he hoped, to deter these creatures from thinking they could get away with eating him. “Please… I dearly wish to speak to Lapis. That’s all I’m here for… Ask her about me. My name is Vermeil…”

“She sleeps, and does not stir.” Truly? An Irken? Vermeil’s heart sank. He regarded the woman before him wordlessly for a moment and she finally sighed. “I will take you to her. Keep your weapons holstered or my sharpshooters will relieve you of them. And your Pak.”

He followed her into the complex; long, heavy robes brushing the ground quietly as they walked. They bypassed the main building; several other hooded creatures glanced at him as they passed.

Dread filled him. Was this woman before him the actual Lapis? Would she reveal herself to him toting a loaded gun? Or perhaps their people were secret Irken allies? There was no telling…

At the outer edge of the perimeter, they finally came upon a small structure that resembled a cellar more than anything. She opened the door for him and gestured that he enter. After a moment’s hesitation, he did so…

…and the door slammed shut behind him. The woman remained outside. The hallway he now occupied was pitch dark. Twenty feet before him, at the end, he saw a faint light… and heard a dull mechanical hum.

Perhaps his doom lay with that light, that hum… but Vermeil had come too far to turn back now.

The hall ended and turned sharply to the left. He entered a small, damp room filled with electronics. Many things were Irken in nature, but severely damaged… Cobbled together with pieces of tech that looked to be from this planet.

In the center of the room sat a console; modest in size but bright, crackling with carefully maintained life. Before it lay the owner.

Indeed she slept, like the dead. She was so tiny. Her body lay propped up on numerous ramshackle pillows, though she still seemed uncomfortable. Her Pak was linked, through hundreds of cables, to the room full of piecemeal technology.

He took some quiet steps closer. The glow of the console screen illuminated her features.

That was no trick of shadow… Her face had been severely burned. While one half was placid in slumber, the other contorted painfully, her eye unable to close completely, leaking thick fluid onto a ravaged cheek. Eternal tears…?

That was no strangely folded blanket. Where her left arm and leg would be, there were only stumps. Her right leg had been amputated below the knee. Her right arm was all that remained intact.

This was the woman that he loved. Vermeil fell to his knees before her. Weeping openly, he clung to her threadbare blankets. He buried his face in them, against her warm body. She flinched in pain, gasping softly, but did not stir.

Several hours passed before she woke. So ensconced in his own misery was Vermeil that he didn’t notice at first. But he finally felt her shift and pulled back.

She stared at him, brow furrowed, for a long time. Suddenly she moved to pull the blanket up, over the bad part of her face.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” she whispered. Her voice was quiet, but had a gentle, sophisticated cadence. Hearing it in person for the first time made Vermeil’s tears begin anew.

“Why not?!” he finally protested, gently reaching to pull the blanket away. “Lapis… I love you. I’m so in love with you…” He found a cloth by the wayside—he’d long since memorized the layout of the room—and reached to gently clean her face.

Flinching away, she replied, “You don’t know what love is! You’re just a smeet.” He ignored her; he’d heard all of that before. She finally allowed him to clean her up. “…how did you find me?”

Smiling, Vermeil replied, “Jai and I worked hard at it for several months.” Rising, he adjusted her pillows for her and helped her sit up more completely. Then he began to clean up the area around her so that he’d have a proper place to sit. “Does no one come to visit you? Do you spend every day in here alone?”

She realized that he was inquiring into who cared for her. “Maliahn or one of her assistants comes to check up on me once a day or so. Bring me snacks.” She grew angry again. “They’ve cared for me all this time. I promised them that, in return, I wouldn’t bring any Irkens here…”

“Well, now I’m here to care for you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Vermeil, you can’t—“

“I can!” he interrupted impertinently. “And I will.”

With a long-suffering sigh, Lapis whispered, “I’m dying, Vermeil…”

“No, you’re not!” It was his turn to be angry. “Your technology is. But I have the resources to fix it. We’ll repair your Pak… We’ll get you a nice new arm if you want. Legs. Or just a mobile chair. Whatever you desire, Lapis… You’ve done so much for me. For us. For the Irken race.”

She didn’t seem convinced, but he did not falter. Finally she smiled, reaching out to caress his face. He took her hand, gently, and kissed her palm. The taste, the scent of her skin set off a riot of emotion in him. “You’d take on a broken old scientist as your mate, Vermeil? You, offspring of the Almighty Tallests?”

“I would be dead if not for you. So many of us would be dead. If not dead, then… Trapped in that tiny room alone, on Veloixs… Letting my caretakers feed me, quietly awaiting my lonely fate…” Tears streaked down his cheeks again. “You spared me from that. And now I’m here to return the favor…”

Lapis gave in. “What did you have in mind?”

During the time she had been asleep, Vermeil already thought everything through. “I could rig up a device to connect you to the Shuvver’s power grid. Move you to my ship and take you to Veloixs. Jai and I, I’m sure, could find a way to repair your Pak. He’s an expert when it comes to those, you know. Thinks he’s a damn Control Brain.”

She thought it over for a little while. He was sure she was thinking the same thing he was: She was already unafraid of death… so what was the big difference between dying here, alone… and risking a death out there? If the possibility of making her well again might arise from the latter… May as well take it.

“We don’t have to move you right away. I’ll give you some time to adjust.”

“You came all the way out here for me. You took a risk. Let’s not waste any more time, Vermeil. I want to do it.”

He stayed with her that evening until exhaustion claimed her again. Then he got to work. He messaged Jai. Without telling him just how mutilated Lapis actually was, he sought the man’s input on the Pak situation. After surveying the materials available to him, Vermeil managed to build what Lapis needed inside of a week. She slept most of that time, but when she was alert, her spirits were high and she smiled eagerly at the boy.

The aliens allowed Vermeil to land his ship nearer to the complex. They moved Lapis quickly, her Pak piggybacking on Vermeil’s for a short period of time.

Soon, they had moved her to the ship and gotten her situated. Vermeil had given her the most comfortable bed on the ship, stacked high with cushions and blankets. Hooking her up to the device he’d concocted was a careful process.

Once her Pak interfaced with the ship’s mainframe, she sank into the pillows and sighed softly. Diagnostics showed she was running at 45% efficiency. Not amazing but a definite improvement. She reported no discomfort.

Thanking her caretakers sincerely, Lapis bid them farewell. It was hard to tell underneath those hoods, but Vermeil thought they seemed relieved to be free of the burden.

Off they went to return to Veloixs. He didn’t want to push Lapis or the ship too hard, so he went at a moderate pace, which would be a two week trip.

After a day of adjustment, Lapis began to thrive. She was able to sit upright on her own and speak to Vermeil at length, just like the old days. With a bit of coaxing, she explained how she had come to find herself in this position.

After the cataclysm, she had been able to survive just fine on her own. Being a scientist, she knew how to make the tech she had available last as long as possible. Unfortunately, she had let her combat training fall to the wayside after her promotion. That had been her downfall.

She’d found a stalled ship not too far from the planet on which Vermeil had found her. Scans showed that there were no lifeforms onboard. The scans were wrong. When she boarded to see if she could salvage anything, the crew attacked her. Fighting back with all her strength, she managed to kill all of them but two. Their battle moved to the bridge of the ship where Lapis realized she was cornered. All of the strategy she’d been taught… discarded!

And so, she made a vindictive decision. She threatened to blow them all to Hell if they didn’t let her go. Knowing they had the upper hand, they called her bluff. But she wasn’t bluffing.

She overloaded the systems and, as they ran past her to try and stop the impending explosion, she shielded herself and tried to return to her own ship.

Unfortunately, she didn’t realize that her Pak had been damaged in the fight. The shield sputtered out and malfunctioned. She was caught in the explosion and so was her ship. She managed to crash-land on that planet…

The citizens found her and took pity on her. They set her up in that cellar and did their best to provide her with what little technology they had. She patched it into the Irken tech she had remaining, but time was not on her side…

For the following two years, she did her best to stave off her Pak’s slow decline. It could not repair the damage she had sustained, and her benefactors were forced to amputate her mangled limbs. Worse still, she could feel her body dying all around that Pak…

“But I’m here now,” Vermeil reassured her. He sat in the bed beside her, arms curled tenderly around her small form.

Nodding quietly, she allowed herself to lean against him. She’d been hesitant with affection at first, but was slowly warming up to him. In a few more days, she allowed him to connect with her. Only one of her antennae were intact but that was enough to send the young man into euphoria. They talked about everything. Hopes, dreams… Lapis told Vermeil about the Empire before the Fall. She knew his parents!

Red led well. Very temperamental but smart. Purple… very irresponsible but less prone to fits of passion. They balanced eachother. She spoke at length about them as leaders but seemed hesitant when asked about anything more personal. Vermeil didn’t think much of it. He adored her and absorbed every word she spoke. He spent every possible moment with her, and slept by her side.

“I love you,” he repeated every chance he had.

Finally, she smiled and replied, “I love you too.”

He was in heaven with her.

Three days from Veloixs, he awoke to a high-pitched sound. Darting upright, he looked over at Lapis. She lay on her side, snuggled against him… But her body remained still. The device hooked to her screamed in alarm. Her Pak had gone completely offline.

“No! NO!” Jumping up, he began to run diagnostics. No reboot processes met with success. Desperate, he unhooked all the wires and went to crack open her very Pak. As he jerked the blankets from over her form, her body rolled to the side slightly. Her head fell over the pillow, allowing light from the monitors to bathe the good side of her face.

Her lips were curled into a smile.

At that moment, Vermeil decided to let her rest. She’d suffered so much for so long… At least for these last two weeks she’d been safe, comfortable and happy.

Detaching the Pak from her still-warm body, he stored it in a safe place. All of its data still remained intact… It just wasn’t operational anymore. Vermeil did not, of course, possess a funerary craft, but he had an escape pod… Attaching a beacon to it, he sent Lapis’ body into space.

“She told me her days were numbered,” Jai told Vermeil the next day. When the boy only frowned in reply, he continued, “She just didn’t want you to blame yourself, that’s all.” All Vermeil could feel was deep sadness, but he did not cry. Perhaps he’d already made peace with her death before she went. “It’s a shame, truly. She was a credit to her race. Did her information download before she passed? I know her Pak was defective.”

“Where… Would it have gone?” Vermeil asked quietly. “There is no Collective anymore… No Control Brains…”

“Of course there is,” Jai protested. “At least… I’ve heard rumors. They say the Tallests hid a Control Brain on Irkland. They knew their days were numbered, I assure you…”

“Irkland?!” Sitting forward in his seat, Vermeil cried, “I have to go!” It was the very least he could do for her. Safeguard her legacy… Ensure that her knowledge was disseminated into the Collective for future generations of smeets to hopefully absorb.

Finding Irkland was no easy task. The planet itself was uncharted, its creation too new to be included in any of the old Irken mapping systems. Vermeil did not find it for several years. In the meantime he, Aton and Jai continued what Lapis had started… More and more Irkens began to migrate to Veloixs.

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REVIEW REPLIES OMG:

Persephone: I'm really glad you like how Zim was turning out. I feel I am in constant danger of making him a simpering little asshole and am trying to steer him away from that. After working on Dib's development for so long, slipping back into Zim's skin has been a bit of a challenge.

Now we all know who Lapis is! I'm really torn about her reveal, lol... I could probably focus more on her as a character but I don't want things to drag.

Sweetchaos: I know I've done a good job if a comment opens with nonsensical caps BD I love that you wrote "so far." My advice to you is to never read another ZADR story plz, so my brainspasms will forever top your mental list of such things. If, in the five months since you've written this comment, you actually HAVE... Well then, I'm not going to continue. TAKE THAT!

Oh I should probably reply to your actual comment. Thank you for the kind words! I actually try not to get too heavy-handed with my prose. I would rather people fill in the blanks than go into extreme detail and bore them to death.

Chrysanthenum: Look! Another TWO chapters! I am so good at this! Thank you for the compliment! I try to portray the secondary characters well without dwelling too much on them.

AS ALWAYS: Thank you to everyone who's taken the time to comment/e-mail/etc. Even though I'm super busy with school and such, I appreciate everything and will try my best to keep from letting you all down (much)!
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The Irken Anatomy