I asked you readers to choose from three different endings for "Let's Die!" The sad ending won with eight votes. Which makes sense 'cause, you know, it is angst. So, after six painfully long years, I decided the sad ending deserved to be fleshed out.
Gaz held her breath because she could not live with the guilt of abusing her dear sweet brother. She held her breath until she expired. Dib held her fragile little body in his arms as a puff of air escaped her lips. Her amber eyes - because all fanfiction authors use gemstone descriptions for eyes - closed for the last time. Her body was as cold and lifeless as a grape Popsicle. Wait, her body wouldn't be cold if she just died. But she was the color of a grape Popsicle from lack of oxygen.
Dib laid the corpse gently on the couch. In death, Gaz looked peaceful and serene.
"I like you better this way," whispered Dib.
He folded her skeletal arms over her chest. Then he picked up her suicide note - the one that said "I'm trying to kill myself, you idiot," and "Why not?" underneath - and tucked it under one of her delicate hands. He brought down a sheet from her bed and covered the corpse. No sense wasting clean sheets on the dead.
Hm, I just realized that since Dib is kind of glad that Gaz is no longer with him, it kind of kills any angst this fanfic might have had.
Oh well, let's cut to Zim's base. I'm sure the former so-called Invader is plenty emo over finding out that the Tallest sent him to Earth to get rid of him and all that stuff. Let your heart be troubled. You better go back and reread that sentence to make sure you read it correctly.
Zim was in the deepest, darkest, coldest room in his base, fingering his self-destruct button and contemplating his worthless life. All of his struggles and trials had been for naught. He was the laughing stock of the Irken Empire. And even when he'd thought his mission was real, he hadn't even managed to conquer this pathetic little ball of dirt after a year of trying - more like two or three years if you count the absurd "one year later" and "6 months later" captions. What a loser Zim was! Everyone would be better off if he took himself out of the picture.
What's that you say? Zim is grossly OOC? Character, shmaracter! Don't you know that the Zim in this story is just a vessel for my own depression and self-doubt? Silly reader.
Zim spiraled deeper and deeper into a black hole of self-loathing. Tears ran like scenic waterfalls down his grass-green cheeks. Zim hated waterfalls, but that's what his tears looked like, so there you go.
Then he did it. He pushed the button on his wrist.
- - -
Gir heard the explosion all the way up in the room where Zim contacted the Tallest. He went down to investigate and found blood all over the walls of the deepest room. It glistened disgustingly like pea soup.
"Master? Where you at? Somethin' sploded!"
"Yeahhh," said the Computer. "That was Zim."
"Whatchoo mean?"
"Zim exploded," the Computer said dispassionately. "He's gone."
"Gone? Like Elvis and his mom? There's no more Master?"
"No more (cough) Master."
Gir's eyes became so full of tears they looked like tiny round fish tanks. He threw himself on the ghastly bloody floor and sobbed. He missed his master almost as much as he missed his cupcake! Aww, don't you feel so bad for him? I'm getting misty-eyed just writing this, really.
After what seemed like hours, or maybe it was "6 months later," Gir was all cried out. But the ache in his little metal heart was as painful as a root canal. Not that Gir had ever had a root canal, or even teeth. He sat up and noticed a shiny metal spike sticking out of the slimy wall. It was part of a spider-leg, a keepsake from his beloved master. The tiny 'bot pulled the leg out of the wall and took it up to the room where he'd last seen Zim alive. There he found his boom box and put in a primitive device called a cassette tape. Then Gir played the saddest song he'd ever heard. It was kind of like how I listened to The Fray's "How To Save A Life" when my kitty died, only much stupider.
"Dead Skunk" lyrics by Loudain Wainwright
Crossin' the highway late last night
He shoulda looked left and he shoulda looked right
He didn't see the station wagon car
The skunk got squashed and there you are
- - -
Purple sighed. He sighed again. Then he sighed a third time.
"What?" snapped Red.
Purple swiveled his head to look at his co-ruler; then looked back out at the bright little stars that mocked him with their happiness.
"Oh nothing."
Red shrugged. "Okay."
Purple heaved the biggest sigh yet.
"Now you're just being annoying. Go sigh somewhere else."
Purple snapped his head back toward Red. "Okay, you dragged it out of me, there is something wrong."
"Oh yeah?" said Red, opening a bag of chips.
"Yeah." Purple's lips quivered. "They took the McRib off the menu." He broke down and sobbed into his four fingers.
Red blinked. "Who? What?"
He was interrupted by one of the communication officers who told them there was an incoming transmission from Earth. Red started to sigh but caught himself; he didn't want to encourage Purple.
"Oh, fine, put him through."
You got yer dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Zim's robot appeared on the screen, looking just as forlorn as Purple.
"What's your problem? Where's Zim? And who's making that noise off-screen?"
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
"That's my sad song for my master. He esploded. He's not Zim no more. Just this." Gir reverently held out the spider-leg, like a knight holding a sword important enough to have a name.
Stinkin' to hi-igh heaven!
"Really?!" Red's eyes lit up. "Are you sure?"
The robot nodded solemnly.
"YES!" cried Red, pumping his fists as if he'd accomplished something. "We should declare a national holiday, like the opposite of Painful Overload Day! But first, tell me how it happened."
"I dunno, he just went BOOM!"
"My Tallest!" said a voice behind Red. "I know why Zim exploded!"
Red spun around and saw a female Irken with onyx eyes.
"What's with the non-standard optical implants?"
"They make me unique, sir! Anyhow, I told Zim you sent him on a fake mission because I knew it would upset him enough to self-destruct!"
Take a whiff on me, that ain't no rose!
Roll up yer window and hold yer nose!
"How did you know this?"
"I just know stuff 'cause I'm Just That Special."
Red raised an eyebrow, not that you could tell. Oh, who am I kidding, the Irken eyebrow joke has been done to death.
"Okaaay. What's your name, soldier?"
"Invader Fanchar, sir!" She saluted and wiggled her curly antennae.
You don't have to look and you don't have to see
'Cause you can smell it in your olfactory
There were 30 official Invaders, and Fanchar wasn't one of them. Red wondered if he and Purple had lied to another troublesome Irken to get rid of her, although he was sure he'd remember if they did. He looked at Purple for a hint.
You got yer dead skunk in the middle of the road
Purple was curled in a corner of his Vortian couch with his head buried in his arms.
"What's with you, Susie Sunshine? Didn't you hear the thing about Zim blowing up?"
"First the McRib and now Zim?" Purple mumbled into his arms. "How much am I supposed to take?"
"Invader" Fanchar shuffled her feet. "My Tallest, I thought you'd be happy." So much for just knowing stuff.
"How can I be happy when poor old Zim is dead? He had so little promise, and he threw it away! And it's all our fault! If we had been nice to him and respected him he'd still be here!"
"Riiight," said Red, narrowing his eyes. "Didn't you once have a guy thrown out an airlock for saying Zim rocks? And it was the wrong guy?"
"Make me feel even more guilty, why don't you! All those people I've killed! I'm nothing but an evil tyrant!"
Red folded his arms. "And?"
"I don't deserve to lead the Empire. I could never live up to Tallest Miyuki. She was a much better leader than me - and you, frankly. Everyone says so even though there's no canonical evidence, so it must be true."
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
"Sirs, for what it's worth, I think you're the best Tallests ever!" Her Pak beeped. "'Scuse me, someone's texting me." She took her cell out of her Pak and read the text.
There r 30 invaders an ur not one im crushin ur dreams lol
~jv~
Fanchar trembled. "I-I'm not an Invader? But-but how can this be?! I'm special!" She looked pleadingly at the Tallest. "I don't know how this JV person got my number, but please tell me they're wrong, sirs! Tell me I'm an Invader!"
You got yer dead skunk in the middle of the road
"Sorry, Fanchar, you're not," said Red.
Fanchar let out a gut wrenching (or in her case squeedly-spooch wrenching) scream and ran out of the room.
Red turned to his co-ruler. "Not such a bad day after all, is it?"
Stinkin' to hi-igh heaven!
"Cut the transmission already! That song's giving me a headache."
- - -
Dib's kind-of-glad feeling about Gaz's passing didn't last. He began to think his sister wasn't so bad after all. Hadn't she saved him from Zim's nanoship? And hadn't she rescued him when Zim trapped him in a glass sphere on his space station? Never mind that she strapped him to a big disc thingy afterward and he had to bribe her to unstrap him. Besides, everyone said Gaz loved him even though there was no canonical evidence, so it had to be true.
Dib wished he had tried to talk Gaz out of her suicide, but he didn't even know if that would've helped. Knowing how Gaz felt about the sound of his voice, it probably would have made her use a quicker method.
His topaz eyes welled with crystalline tears. This description isn't girly; it's cool and emo because I say it is. Anyway, Dib picked up a sharp knife and held it to his morbidly pale wrist.
"My pain ends now."
Unfortunately, Dib didn't understand that cutters generally don't slash their wrists to end their lives, but to cause physical pain that temporarily takes their minds off their emotional pain. So, Dib didn't die. Well, okay, obviously he bit the dust at some point in his life, just not right then. Instead, he just bled a lot. He held his wrist over the kitchen sink out of respect for his deceased sister, who had told him she didn't want to slip in his blood. It poured like strawberry syrup into the basin.
You may recall that Dib's mother is a jar of gel in this ficverse. If you don't recall, just go with it.
"You need help, son!" she cried. "I'm calling 911!" She rolled over to the phone and somehow dialed the three digits.
"Great," Dib muttered darkly. "Now I have to figure out a way to kill myself before the paramedics get here." Too bad there were no guns in the house. And Dib wasn't hardcore enough to stab himself in the heart. Then he hit on an idea. It was another cliché, but that's the way this fic is going, so what are you gonna do? Anyhow, he ran upstairs and locked himself in the bathroom, where he started filling the tub. After turning on the hair dryer, Dib got into the tub with his clothes on because I don't feel like picturing him naked. Then he dropped the hair dryer into the water.
BZZT!
Oh, it was spectacular. His heart stopped instantly, so he hardly felt a thing.
- - -
Six real, true months later, Gir was lying on the floor of Zim's base, still listening to that sad, sad song.
Yeah you got yer dead cat and you got yer dead dog
On a moonlit night you got yer dead toad frog
Got yer dead rabbit and yer dead raccoon
The blood and the guts, they're gonna make you swoon!
The robot stared at the disemboweled ceiling. He was very weak, with only enough strength to slowly move his head. Gir had not eaten since his master had gone over the rainbow to see Dorothy and Toto, but he hardly noticed his hunger pains. All he could think about was how much he missed Zim who was dead like all those poor little dead animals in the dead song. With the last of his energy, he flatly sang, "Dead skunk in the middle of the road, stinkin' to high…heaven." His luminescent aquamarine eyes gradually dimmed; his vision faded to black.
- - -
Iggins sauntered down the sidewalk in a completely random cameo, not caring in the least that his eyes were two sizes too big for their sockets. He hummed along with the soundtrack on his GS2 game, which thankfully had nothing to do with skunks. Suddenly he felt a cold metal object press against his neck.
"Just die already!" said a tenor voice. Then Iggins knew no more.
END
A/N: My goal was to make the sequel at least almost as funny as the original. I thought it was hilarious when I first finished it, but now that I'm rereading it I'm not sure if the humor is that good. -shrug- I don't know, you tell me.