#hebelieved

     ❝ HELLO, DIB-FILTH.  I wonder what sort of HIDEOUS,      GROTESQUE fate our terrifying teacher would have      awaiting you if I commanded GIR to devour your      HOMEWORK. ❞

     ❝ I DON’T know where you heard such a thing,      but that’s -- rather obviously -- not true.  At all. ❞

Send me a word and I’ll write a drabble. 

            It had become somewhat of a pattern, an unspoken agreement between the two hereditary enemies ; Zim would launch a spectacularly evil and overly complicated plot to overthrow the human race, Dib would rise up to combat his merciless alien will and attempt to save his miserable, doomed planet, Zim’s plan would ultimately fail ( though it was usually through some form of incompetence or unwitting self-sabotage, rather than due to any effort on Dib’s part, however well-meaning said efforts had been ), and the cycle would continue. But this particular phase was relatively new – every so often, after another catastrophic clash of opposing wills, when the dust had settled, the pair would relent to one another in a sort of unspoken truce ; it wasn’t as if Zim was going to launch another nefarious plan in the same day, after all, and often it seemed that Dib was too exhausted from his efforts to oppose the invader to bother stopping him even if he did so. No, instead they would both wordlessly acknowledge the fact that the game was over for today, and resolve to be civil with one another until the next morning, when the alien would undoubtedly resume his malicious intentions with renewed vigor.

            Sometimes they simply bid the other goodbye ; well then, curse you and all that, death to the humans, see you at school tomorrow. But other times, they would …talk – discuss the unfolding of the day’s events, take some superficial pleasure in ridiculing the other’s foolish shortcomings, or complimenting one another on the rare occasion that they noted something worthy of acknowledgement in their respective rival. But on even rarer occasions, they would talk about nothing pertaining to their perpetual struggle for control of the planet at all – the Dib human’s somewhat lackluster home life, scientific theories that humans had yet to stumble upon, and sometimes …when the alien was feeling distracted enough to reveal such things …he would satisfy the human’s curiosity about Irken customs. That was how they had stumbled upon the conversation in question, a topic which seemed oddly foreign to the Earth boy ; being defective.

            ❝ – Eh? Your puny human mind misunderstands. There’s no fixing it. ❞

            Defective was a four letter word – well, not literally. Not in English. It was nine letters in that language ; and actually, it was even more characters when spelled out in Irken – but that wasn’t the point. It didn’t mean the same thing that it did here on this filthy planet – or, perhaps it did in essence, but the repercussions for the condition were vastly different. It wasn’t as simple as rewiring a hard drive, or rebooting a computer. No …on Irk, being defective was a good as a death sentence. In fact, those who were deemed so were resigned to a fate even worse than death.

            ❝ – defectives are mistakes; nothing but a hindrance to the objective. So accordingly, they are erased – their consciousness is deleted, their PAK destroyed, and their existence is erased from Irk’s recorded history. – they thought ZIM was defective once, you know. ❞

            He admitted with a nonchalance that didn’t suit at all with the description of the title he had just provided. In fact, he seemed rather smug about the matter, the soles of his standard issue boots scraping against the roof tiles of the human’s squalid little home as he pointed his chin up toward the stars with pride.

            ❝ – They held a trial for me and everything. Of course, the Control Brains determined that it was all a misunderstanding ; after all, how could ZIM be defective? As it turns out, I’m just so amazing that it was beyond their comprehension. They ended up giving me a promotion, and let me pilot the Massive, too. It was the least they could do, after all. But I didn’t blame them, of course – very few minds can grasp just how exceptionally advanced my genius is. Take GIR, for example. ❞

            He gestures vaguely with a wave of his gloved claw down into the human’s yard, where the little green-suited robot was currently occupying itself by lying on the side of its over-sized head and running in a circle on the lawn. The grass beneath it had started to flatten and die in response to the abuse, adopting an appearance that was suspiciously similar to that of a traditional crop circle.

            ❝ – The Tallest gave him specifically to me for my extremely important mission here. He’s an incredibly advanced model, light-years beyond the capability of standard-issue SIR units. To your untrained, human eye holes, he likely appears to be quite stupid – BUT YOU’RE WRONG !! WRONG !!! – Your tiny human brain meats simply cannot grasp the complexity of his advanced engineering. Zim is the same, naturally – I’m so amazing that most life forms are simply too stupid to understand it. ❞