Many moon ago, I wrote a fic. It was 10 chapters long, badly written with horrible grammar and spelling. It was but by the grace of an editor that it was barley readable. I wrote it, hated it, and changed more times then any other fic I've wrote since.

But that was a good thing. When I first finished it, it was so stereotypical it literally STANK of unoriginality. Then, one night while writing the fic which created my very own mascot, I suddenly decided to read it. I was bored of reading the same thing on I realised something while reading this little fic, IT WAS THE SAME THING ON FF. NET. Then I also realised something else. I could make this fic something rather different. I changed it dramatically. It was no longer about Dib being made irken and then being friends with Zim before turning back. It became about politics, thoughts, ways of life. Dib was brutally brainwashed, exposed to the full reality of being irken. And I didn't show a nice, efficient, friendly empire either. This was a cold, heartless machine, but not one that the people hated. They loved it, because that was also all the irkens had ever known. The irkens knew that they had surrendered free thought, free will and any real individual rights, but they accepted that as the price for total perfection. It was shocking for some reviewers; I think someone even called it 'Neo-Nazi'.

I also made the ending different...I took it away. It ended on one of the best cliff-hangers I've ever done, well. So far it’s the only cliff-hanger I've ever done.

I thought that people weren’t going to like it. People here like romance and angst and horror. Not politics. They like to see people paired up with nice, patterned plots that you know will continue on a certain path. They don't like their opinions on their very democracy called into question. Just like no-one writes religious fics because they know people will start arguing about God and all that rot.

'It's going to fail miserably' I thought.

It's got 129 reviews...my highest ever. It was only my 4th fic, but I think it went some way to putting my name up. Plus it made me realise that people actually like reading things that question their opinions. I've practically made my staple doing things that people don't ever do. Why they don't, I don't know. Most of them are so obvious that I keep thinking that they MUST have been done.

The majority of the ideas going into this fic for example. This is filled with things so unoriginal that it PAINS me...but yet, NO ONES EVER DONE THEM BEFORE! There so OBVIOUS, yet people refuse to include them in!

But I digress.

You don't ignore a fic that gets over 100 reviews do you? It doesn't demand a sequel; it practically chases you down an ally and assaults you for one.

But how could I sequel this? It ended on a CLIFFHANGER for crying out loud! You can't add onto that because half your audience shouts at you for disappointing them.

So I decided early on, that the sequel would be a role reversal. Zim would be human. Not following the original story, but a sort of...alternative universe to it.

I can here you shouting out how original that idea is right now.

But like I said, the things in this will be things you've probably only been HOPING to read about in other Zim-Human fics. Fuck love. Fuck first time feeling romance. Fuck instant change.

Change is never instant...it’s a long and eventual process. People rarely change in day. They don't even change in a week. You watch TV shows where people spend a week getting a make-over. New clothes, looks, sometimes even bodies. It's bull-shit. They're still the same inside; they hold the same views on life, the same political opinions, the same way of moving through life.

And that’s what’s going to be different about this. Zim isn't going to change in a day, or a week...it's going to take years. After all, he isn’t getting a make-over...he's changing his whole damn SPECIES.

The fic was called I Am the Enemy. This is its sequel, Purgatory.

And this is only the prologue.

Zim's eyes flickered half open. He felt like he had gone through the entire of his Devastis training in a day. He couldn't move; his body ached so much. He clenched a hand, and let out a low groan. Pain shot through his arm and he clenched his teeth together and his body stiffened. This in turn only caused more pain. He took in a shuddered breath, finding that even his very insides hurt. Pain didn't explode over him. Pain only explodes when it's concentrated in one spot and then it fades just as quickly. This pain was more of a...fire. A fire of pain that licked and burnt and tortured every cell inside him. His skin was like it was melting in rain, his insides felt like they where being kicked, painfully, into motion for the very first time. Even his very breaths made his eyes water. It was like no pain he had ever felt, or thought, or even wished upon his enemy before. And he had wished some terrible things upon his enemies.

He blacked out.

When he came around again, the sunlight was higher on the wall where it shone through the window. Zim was still in pain, but now less so then before. He was able to look around and finally take stock of his surroundings. However, his vision was...blurry. He couldn't seem to be able to focus well on anything. Things shimmered and waved around him, but, thankfully, they where slowly gaining some solidarity.

He was surrounded by white, sterile white, in a small room. He was lying on a hospital bed, which had white sheets and a blue blanket across it. In the corner was a wooden chair and above him, circling the bed, was a curtain rail, with the curtain pulled to the right of him. To the far right was a window, of which a not-to-late afternoon sun was shining through, and a brown wooden door to his left. He suddenly noticed something that was also to his left, a drip. It was filled with a translucent liquid, and it was attached to his arm. He immediately went to remove it, but then he noticed something about his arm.

It wasn’t green.

It was an ill looking white. He, despite the pain that pulsed thought it, lifted it up, inspecting it. He slowly, trembling, moved it closer, so he could get a better view as his vision was still blurry. It was his arm, it had to be, the pain was telling him so. But...this was a human arm. His eyes travelled to his palm, four fingers and a thumb, un-gloved, thin and bony. He looked from the palm to the back of this hand and to the palm again, eyes wide in shock. The pain suddenly seemed to descend to a dull pulsing numbness, and a sinking sick feeling began to boil in his squeedly spooch, or what he assumed to be his squeedly spooch. He flexed his fingers, clenching his hand into a weak fist and open again. They responded...but...this was impossible.

Zim decided he needed to find a mirror, fast.

He forced himself upright, his body yelling a refusal, but Zim ignored it. His brain noted the surprising ease at which he had done that, almost like his PAK wasn’t weighting him down. But he brushed this off as impossible, as he couldn’t live without his PAK.

He pulled the drip from his arm, noticing with some horror that his right arm was just like his left.

He grimaced as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Then he stopped, his eyes widening again. He had toes. His feet were the same ill white colour of his arms. He moved his foot, silently gasping in horror that it was his foot. His insides sank quicker, and he could almost taste sick at the back of his throat.

He saw that he was wearing a pair of white hospital pants, and a pull at his shirt he saw he was wearing a white hospital t-shirt.

He narrowed his eyes, and forced himself to stand. The pain in his legs was almost unbearable. It felt like this was the first time he had ever even stood. He tried to take a step, but he couldn't balance. A sudden feeling of dizziness became him, and he shut his eyes tight, trying to gain a sense of up and down. He fell. He hit the cold, polished hospital floor with a sharp yelp and a vicious kick of pain.

"What’s happened to me?" He growled out quietly, swallowing back vomit from his dizziness. He sat up, against the bed and ran a hand along his head.

He froze.

His antenna had gone. Both hands flew to his head, searching for his precious antenna. Without them, he couldn't balance, he couldn’t hear anything or pick up on his surroundings, or even display emotion properly. They were one of the most essential appendices of an irken body. To lose even half of it just one antenna could reduce an irken to the level of a cripple. But, while implants and surgery can repair antenna, one would be severally looked down upon. Something left over from ancient times, some strange idea that no one was sure where it had started, but to lose an antenna was to be greatly shamed.

Zim was panicking now. Things where spinning out of control and he couldn't see any way of getting that control back. He had lost his antenna, and his skin felt strange, and defiantly not irken. His fingers were…human, like his feet, and he had lost his antenna.

The need for a mirror rose again.

Zim decided that if he couldn't walk, then he would crawl across the floor on his hands and knees. It was degrading, but at least he could actually get somewhere. He managed to get to the chair on the other side of the room, despite almost falling on his side once or twice and his body screaming in agonising protest. He pulled himself up and sat, panting. He closed his eyes again as he let the pain of his journey fade from his body.

He opened his weary eyes and looked over at the window on the wall. There was a plant pot on the window ledge. Zim remembered its name began with a D or something.

It was a simple thing, with a short stem, two leaves and a yellow flower head that looked out of the window. Zim suddenly spotted that the flower had a reflection and his eyes widened. He could use the window to look at himself!

This realisation fuelled Zim to get up from the chair. But he had forgotten that he couldn't walk, and so he stumbled quickly into the wall. He leaned heavily against it and drunkenly made his way towards the window. He thanked his luck that he was now tall enough to look out of it.

He reached the window ledge, and grabbed it with one hand. He was panting heavily, hunched over. His legs, arms and body were still screaming in pain. It was like he had never used them before. Like these were the first steps he had ever made, the first breaths, the first time he had ever grabbed something with his arm.

Zim took a long, deep breath and studied himself, raising himself achingly upright.

Surly, whatever had happened to him, couldn't be so bad.

He was wrong. So very wrong. Everything around him faded away, there was only him and his reflection and the plant. He saw his eyes widen. His reddish-brown human eyes look at him. His human nose. His human ears. He had no hair on his head, no eyebrows, but no antenna. He watched his jaw drop in silent horror and he looked at his human teeth. His thin face, ghostly reminiscent of the one he used to see in the mirror only yesterday.

For a moment, there was no pain. He felt like he was floating on nothing. Then, the world came back, as did the pain. And the sickness. He threw up onto the floor. And fell backwards. He scurried away from the window, not wanting look at himself anymore. He closed his eyes tight and shielded his eyes with his arms, but he could still see that...human staring back at him. That wasn't him, that couldn't be him, it was impossible.

Zim couldn't stop himself shaking violently. He knew he was going into shock. He could hear himself screaming, but he wasn't sure if he really was.

There was an echo of a door opening, then someone calling his name.

Then it didn't hurt anymore.

Then he drifted into unconsciousness as his body and mind shut down.

I have a feeling next year on is gonna be a good year for me…

I am aware that I sound like a big headed megalomaniac at the beginning. And I am also aware that this prologue has several mistakes in it.

But believe me, its all for the good of the fic. When it truly gets released, it will be fully edited and with less ranting crap from me.

You can review your eagerness if you wish, but thats up to you. For now, just know that at least 1 fic next year is gonna rock some socks.