Invader Sideos is lookin' back on the track for a little green bag and singing: HERE IT IS FOOOOOOOLS! The continuation of Earthly Addictions is here! Let's take a note for those who haven't read E.A. Zim is a drug addict, and not in a funny way ether. I have made Zim into something no other IZ writer on this site (to my knowledge anyway) has ever done. Some have made him gay, the Tallest, human, date Gaz, date Tak, have kids etc, etc. But NO ONE has ever gone as far as to make him a junkie.

Personally I can't see why not...I mean, it's original, fun and great to write about. I suppose people expect you to write about how horrible and wrong it all is, which is indeed true. But hey, it's not that bad when you're actually ON the damm stuff...well when you're actually taking it at the time anyway.

But I digress.

Last time we saw our wonderfully foolish anti-villain, Zim, he was on the ropes. No Tallest, on the most addictive drug on earth, no dealer to get it from and no friends or base to go back to. So let's pick up directly from where we left off.

Written to Iggy and the Stooges, mainly Nightclubbing, Lust for Life and Search And Destroy.

I don't own Zim. Fanfics, here I come...

-------------------

The cold December wind howled through the dark streets of the city. The midnight moon half shone through the looming multi-story buildings and drifting clouds, which were loaded for another night's snow blitz. The shops, although most of them were shut, were still brightly lit with advertisements for creepy Christmas decorations and pathetic mass produced presents. The streets were black with the night, and only the neon lit shop windows and the orange street lights cast any colour into the world. Dirty snow was everywhere. No longer the clean white of the suburbs, the city's snow was be-speckled with mud, litter and other filth that it had swallowed from the people during the day.

The streets were totally empty, only the odd rat, cat or stray dog would emerge into the sparse light, but they would go just as fast as they arrived. There was only one exception to this.

Walking in silence was a single being. He was a very thin boy who looked to be about seventeen. He had black pants which were tucked into black boots. He had a red shirt with thin black stripes and, over this, wore an ankle long dull red coat which looked like it had been taken from the army. On his head was a slightly messy, but quaffed head of black hair, and when he walked under a street light one could see his half lidded eyes were of a dark blue colour with dark rings surrounding them, making him look tired and worn out.

Strangely however, he had no nose or ears and on his back was an odd looking, oblong-ish metallic object with three large dull pink spots. One could also see that this person had pale, sickly green skin and when he hugged his arms around him as the cold wind blew, one could spot that he had only a thumb and two claw-like black gloved fingers on each hand.

The reason was because this person was in fact not a human, but an alien. More precisely, he was an Irken named Zim. However, unlike any other alien who visited Earth, Zim was not observing the strange backwards inhabitants, or admiring the natural wonders of a blue sky and a brilliantly varied climate which covered mountains, fields, deserts and a none toxic sea. Zim only had one thing running over and over in his mind.

"I need some aswermitus...now," he grumbled out while giving an involuntary shiver. "Damm Dib, thinking he could better me. HA, STU-pid HU-MAN, I am Zim! I am the best..."

Zim rubbed a hand over the top of his arm. Under the coat and shirt lay a small pinprick in the pale green skin. This pin prick was where Zim had been regularly, night after night, placing a syringe into his arm and pumping the latest in highly addictive and hallucinogenic street drugs into his veins. Zim had so far gone almost twelve and a half hours without a fix, and so his body was reminding him what happened when he did satisfy the biological and psychological demand.

Zim could feel the itch right across his arms, that horrible crawling, under skin itch that wouldn't go away no matter how hard you scratched. He could also feel the internal shivers, the ones that no amount of cold could match, and the clammy sweats along his back, face and palms.

His body was screaming at him in pain, horror and rejection, but most of all, it screamed in hunger. Zim knew that what he was doing was probably eating him alive. His first two weeks inwards had destroyed the old, healthy, manic Zim. The drug had re-shaped him; he had become cold, anti-social. His once boundless energy had been sapped from him, leaving nothing but a shadow of the former Irken elite.

But he didn't care. All he wanted was another fix, another chance to get away from all the pain and rejection and filth he saw around him, another chance to see the object of his unsurpassed obsession. The girl in the drug dreams.

The image of the strange Irken girl came to Zim's mind and it brought a smile to his face. Her clothes often changed as no two trips were ever alike, but her features always stayed the same. That beautiful face, those perfect teeth and wonderfully dark blue eyes. Her slim body and those odd white bunny ears instead of normal antenna.

Zim closed his eyes and whispered "perfect," although he often wondered why he found the bunny ears so alluring. He shrugged, when he saw her it never mattered anyway.

He opened his eyes and watched cautiously as a stray dog sniffed near a darkened alleyway before running in the opposite direction, across the road, and into the shadows. His eyes looked to the alleyway the dog had come from and he saw a shimmer of movement.

His heart, and veins, leapt. Could this be a dealer with the one drug he needed? Zim had encountered several drug dealers during the walk, but none of them had the one his body screamed for.

For a short time he had wondered about how he could pay for any more of the drug. The Dib-human had forced him from his home and hadn't given him the chance to get the amount he needed. However, on his walk around the city he had been threatened by a small group of people, most of them dressed, rather oddly for the weather Zim had thought, in semi-expensive sport clothes and were tattooed. They had talked a lot like his original dealer, which had prompted Zim to ask them if they were selling any answermitus. Instead they had laughed and tried to assault him. It was their funeral. Zim had unleashed the full fury of a former Irken elite, who had not had his desired drug, upon them. When he had taken the last one down, all under two minutes, he had taken the liberty to rob them of all their money, which resulted in a safe one thousand two hundred dollars.

He broke out into a run and skidded round and into the ally, which was dimly lit by a single streetlight. However there was not a dealer, but three humans. The first two were big, strong looking and were dressed in the same style, but slightly more formal, clothing he had seen on the gang before. However, these guys had coats and gloves on, obviously because of the night's deathly cold. One was a large African-American with a black goatee and a bald head, also. In his left hand he held a rather beaten-up looking back-pack.

The other was a slightly tanned Caucasian man with a shaved face and short bleach blond hair. Both wore sunglasses, which was odd seeing as it was almost pitch black, and both were very ugly. They were both cornering the third human to the side of the wall and looking down on him with sneering, vicious smiles.

The third human was very different from the two standing over him. He had floppy, messy brown hair that came down over his eyes and round his head like a bowl. His face looked ill, thin and tired. He had great dark rings round his dark green eyes, which were covered by a pair of large, thick rimmed glasses and his cheekbones were visible in his almost white face. He was wearing a black hoody with the hood pulled down, a pair of black gloves on his hands and a pair of green, tight, combat pants which hung over a pair of damaged looking converse shoes. He looked to be roughly the same age as the Dib human, and he was cowering from the two larger, older men.

Zim stood at the opening of the ally and watched from the shadows as the stronger humans threatened the smaller one. It reminded him greatly of when he had seen the jocks at Hi-Skool bully the nerds. Watching those always used to cheer Zim up after a long day.

The first bully, the blond one, pushed the smaller human into the alley wall roughly and gave a stupid sounding laugh. "You don't go angryin' our gang, man."

"Yea," The other one chuckled dumbly, "You think you can use you're...err...cutting skills to steal our cash?"

The blond one turned to his equally stupid friend, "It's hacking, Bob. He hacked the boss's bank account."

"Oh," The one named Bob mused, "Well, I knew he used a computer."

The blond one turned back to the smaller teenager. "The boss wants us to make you eat the dirt for that one. Huh, huh, huh."

The smaller guy suddenly spoke up. He even sounded nerd-ish with his jumpy, nasally voice. "Oh please don't kill me. I didn't know I was hacking your boss's account. Please, let me go. You've got your money back! Please!" He sobbed out the last words and slid down the wall as the two larger men looked on, laughing even more stupidly.

Zim rolled his eyes; he was already bored with this. He turned and was about to walk away, when the goateed one said something that caught his attention. "You A junkies are all alike."

Zim spun back round, but made sure to make as little sound as possible when he did.

"Yur," the blond one chucked as he slowly reached into his coat pocket, "You're all so spiked up you don't even know what you're doing most of the time until...BANG!"

The smaller boy jumped where he was crouched in his protective ball against the alleyway. "Please, please, please! Oh God someone help me!"

Zim took the invite and stepped out of the shadows, his fists already balled to fight. "Let him go...now."

The two stronger men looked just as shocked as the smaller, whimpering teenager on the ground. It was several seconds until the goateed one spoke up. "Who the hell are you holmes?"

The blond one stepped away from the boy on the ground and began to slowly approach Zim, his hand still reaching for his jacket pocket. "Yea, man, you better walk away now or I'll blow you away."

Zim's mouth twitched in an amused smile, "You can't hurt me, I am Zim. I am superior to you human scum."

The stronger guy again seemed bemused at this; he wasn't very used to being insulted unless it was by his boss. "Did you just insult me?"

The one named Bob looked to his friend, "Hey, Rock, I think he just insulted you."

Zim rolled his eyes at their collective idiocy. "Of course I insulted you. Are you really so thick skulled that you can't tell when you're being insulted?"

Rock growled, drew out the gun he was reaching for with his right hand and pointed it at Zim, who didn't bat an eyelid. The gun was your average run-off-the-mill berretta. The only difference was that it had a silencer attached to it. The thug grinned slowly. "You better take that back, fool, or I'll-"

He didn't finish. Zim darted forward and before Rock could blink Zim had grabbed his wrist. The Irken twisted it like lightning and instantly broke the man's arm. Rock automatically dropped the gun and Zim released his wrist and grabbed the gun in the same movement. Before Bob could even react properly, Zim turned the gun to him and shot him through his shoulder.

The two men howled in pain and Zim took the advantage further. He kneed Rock in his crotch and followed with a sharp kick to the face, instantly knocking him cold. Bob tried to reach for his own gun, but Zim had already jump-kicked him in his stomach and, as Bob doubled over, Zim delivered a swift kick to the side of the man's head, instantly knocking him unconscious.

Zim quickly dropped the gun and doubled over, resting his hands on his knees. Almost immediately Zim felt like he had run for thirty miles straight. The drug abuse had sapped his energy until short runs now made him tired.

However he couldn't rest yet, as the teenager who had watched wide eyed on the floor now grabbed the bag from the K.Oed Bob's hand and, with a short stumble, he got up, grabbed an already exhausted Zim by the shoulder, and ran at full speed out of the ally and into the street.

Together the two boys ran. Well, it was more like the floppy haired teen was dragging a very angry Zim down the street and through a few more dark alleyways at full speed until finally he stopped behind a twenty-four hour store and collapsed, panting heavily. Zim would have beaten the living daylights out of the boy for making him run so fast if he could gather the energy to do so, but he too fell against the back of the store, devoid of breath.

It took a good ten minutes of panting before the hooded teen got the energy to loll a head towards Zim and breathe out, "Thanks for that, man."

Zim had recovered quicker however, and he darted at the teen, grabbing him by the neck of his hoody while raising a clawed fist beside his head.

The Irken's voice growled as he hissed, "Don't think I saved you because I'm such a good citizen, stink-beast. You have knowledge that I need."

The now scared teen quickly stuttered out, "I told those thug guys everything I know, I swear. I don't work for anyone, I-"

"SHUT YOUR NOISE-TUBE, WORM BABY!" Zim looked the now terrified teen in the eye, "Where's your dealer?"

The teen furrowed his brow slightly. "W-What?"

Zim growled again and pulled his grip on the boy's shirt tighter. "Those stupid idiots said that you were an aswermitus addict, so I repeat. Where. Is. Your. DEALER!"

The teen looked at Zim in confusion for a few seconds more, before a slow smile appeared on his worried looking face. "You're...You're an addict too?"

"Yes," Zim growled out. He was beginning to actually consider beating the answer out of the weak looking junkie. "And I haven't had my nightly fix, so if you don't tell me where your dealer is then I will destroy you. OK?"

Zim expected the teenager to cower in the face of his mighty Irken persuasion powers, but instead the boy smiled wider. "Oh, I can do much better then that. Let me go and I'll show you a place where you can take all the A you want, dude. It's like an addict hotel or something."

Zim narrowed his eyes at the junkie in thought. Should he trust him? After all, he was about to be shot by a thug, so who knows what sort of things the kid had been doing. But then again Zim had saved this human's life, if he hadn't stepped in then the boy could have been shot.

Zim looked down for a second before looking back at the teen, pushing him further into the wall. "If you're lying to me, I will do the same to you as I did to those pathetic worms back there. OK?"

The teenager nodded quickly and grabbed his backpack tightly. "Sure, sure. I-I'm Shawn, by the way."

Zim let go and stood up, never taking his eyes from the human. He watched with cautious eyes as the human also got to his feet. "I'm Zim. I'm a totally normal human pig smelly. Understand? I am normal."

Shawn gave Zim a quick, curious look before laughing it off and putting up his hood. "You really need a fix, man."

-------------------

Enjoy that folks? I know it's not the usual IZ fanfic; in fact it's not very IZ at all. But hay, I don't care. The best IZ fics are always the ones that go outside the usual IZ-ness anyway.

Ok, Shawn. I hope you guys like him, or hate him...see if I care. His design was mostly my shot at your typical nerd/hacker turned drug addict. The name comes from SLC punk, a movie about punks, and there's this hobo kid called Shawn who was whacked on acid for about a month in the film...I thought it would be fitting for the character. He has a line where he says "I'm a bum now...it sucks man!"

Bob...no story, just a random name.

Rock comes from 'Rock Holmes', a Japanese anti-hero guy who has been in several different comics playing many different roles. I don't own a copy of him, but he does have a two page bit in my '500 manga heroes and villains' book.

R&R now, do your patriotic duty!