Karma Circle: Judgement is a one-shot Invader Zim fanfic by Zim'sMostLoyalServant.
Gaz is having a pretty normal school day, aside from one unusual thing: her brother Dib has made a new friend named Daniel. When he annoys her, she beats and threatens him into submission, just like she does to everyone else who she finds annoying. The consequences of this action will be painful indeed, as Daniel is actually the apprentice of Purgatory, the Avatar of Karma...and they both feel that Gaz is long overdue for a lesson about how dangerous it is to make enemies of everyone you meet.
This fanfic provides examples of:
- The Apprentice: Daan Yel is the apprentice to Purgatory, the personification of karma. In the past, he came into this position when he encountered Purgatory and asked to be trained in the art of delivering justice to those who escaped it, after being tortured and mutilated by an Irken soldier.
- Artificial Limbs: Daan Yel has a metal hand and a metal foot, having lost both when an Irken soldier chopped them off.
- Ax-Crazy: Gaz borders on this with how often she gets physically violent with people who bother her, get in her way, or just annoy her.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Mr. Elliot, Gaz's perpetually smiley and cheerful teacher, is one of those who assault her in the nightmare given to her by Daan Yel.
- Break the Haughty: All the beatings that Gaz receives in her nightmare from people she hurt merely make her furious. What well and truly breaks her is when Daan Yel brings up a floating video-screen of her father, who proceeds to state that he considers her a disappointment and would like to disown her for doing nothing with her life except playing video games, eating junk food, and beating up people who annoy her.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Daan Yel was previously captured, tortured and mutilated by an Irken soldier, to the point where one of his horns is broken off and his right hand and foot have both been replaced with metal prosthetics.
- Disproportionate Retribution: During Gaz's nightmare, when she is being beaten by a mob of people she hurt in the real world, all of them furiously voice their grievances with her.Student #1: You slammed me against a locker for getting a better test score than you!
Student #2: You beat me bloody with a trashcan for taking too long at the vending machine!
Student #3: You tried to drown me in the bathroom for cutting you off on line at the Mall! - Divine Punishment: Purgatory, the Avatar of Karma, has his apprentice Daan Yel appear to Gaz in a dream to confront her about her habit of using violence against people she doesn't like or who annoy her. When she shows no remorse for doing so, he throws her into a nightmare where everyone she's victimized — her classmates, teacher, brother and father — gets a chance to either beat her up the same way she did to them or tell her what they really think about her.
- The Dog Bites Back: In the living world, nobody can fight back against Gaz because she's too physically powerful...but Daan Yel bypasses that in the dream world by tapping into their subconsciouses and giving them the power in their dreams to retaliate against her, with fists and words alike.
- Dream Walker: Daan Yel has the power to reach into people's minds and dreams. He does so to numerous people that Gaz has hurt in real life, including her brother Dib, and shows her how they really feel about her by letting them take out their anger on her in a dream.
- Emissary from the Divine: Dib's new friend Daniel/Daan Yel is the apprentice of Purgatory, the personification of karma in the mortal plane. He is sent to Earth to judge Gaz's character, and concludes that she is a horrible person who not only uses violence to get her way, but feels no remorse for doing so and believes her victims deserve what they get.
- Equivalent Exchange: Purgatory comments that, while there are versions of Gaz throughout the multiverse who are nice, her brother Dib usually replaces her as the evil or selfish one in the Membrane family if that happens.
- Everyone Has Standards: While Purgatory has a negative opinion of Gaz due to her cruelty, he still warns his apprentice Daan Yel to not conflate her with the Irken soldier who tortured him, which would render his judgement unfair.
- Fingore: Mr. Elliot's dream-revenge on Gaz involves smashing her hands bloody with a ruler in the style of old-fashioned corporal punishment.
- Food Slap: In Gaz's nightmare, Dib's anger at her for always stealing his food translates into him throwing a full bowl of milk and cereal at her, spraying a can of soda on her, and...
- Force Feeding: ...stuffing so many slices of pizza into her mouth that she nearly chokes on them.
- Foul Cafeteria Food: During her confrontation with Daniel in the cafeteria, Gaz threatens to drop a spoonful of mashed potatoes on him. This doesn't seem all that threatening until she lets him go and tosses them over her shoulder, and they hit Zita in the face, making her fall over screaming as she breaks out in strangely colored boils.
- Holographic Disguise: Daan Yel uses one while on Earth to pass as a human child. Unlike Zim's Paper-Thin Disguise, it works perfectly, as even Dib can't tell that he's not human.
- It's All About Me: Gaz couldn't care less about the well-being of anyone else. If someone annoys her in the slightest, gets in her way, or has something she wants, she takes that as carte blanche to beat them senseless until her anger is satisfied.
- Jerk Justifications: When Daan Yel shows Gaz a slideshow of all the times she bullied and assaulted others, her only excuse for doing so is that they should have stayed away from her or given her what she wanted. Needless to say, Daan Yel is not impressed.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: None of the people who got their revenge on Gaz in their dreams will remember doing so when they wake up. However, Daan Yel reminds her that if she continues to go about life the way she has been doing, someday she may push someone to their breaking point who beats her up the same way she does to everyone else.
- Laser-Guided Karma: In their confrontation in the cafeteria, Gaz makes her usual threat to Daniel about sending him into a nightmare world as a metaphor for giving him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. In his true form as Daan Yel, he later literally sends her into a nightmare, where she's beaten by her past victims.
- Misplaced Retribution: Even though Daan Yel correctly judges that Gaz is a horrible person, Purgatory reminds him not to project onto her the traits of the Irken soldier who tortured him, as it will mess up his judgement of her.
- Mugging the Monster: Gaz threatens and assaults a new student who turns out to be apprentice to the Anthropomorphic Personification of karma itself, and he is more than willing to give her a terrible nightmare of her former victims getting revenge on her for bullying them.
- No-Sell: Daan Yel is far more powerful than Gaz, with all of her attempts to bully him into submission completely failing. He throws her into a nightmare when she tries to physically assault him, and easily disables her flesh-eating security dolls with a single wave of his hand.
- Psychological Projection: Daan Yel briefly correlates Gaz with the Irken who tortured him, due to her cruel personality. Purgatory warns him that he's falling into this trope, and not to do so, as it will affect his judgement.
- Sue Donym: Daan Yel is a disguised Vortian who has come to Earth to pass judgment on Gaz. He uses "Daniel" as his fake name while pretending to be a human child.
- Transplant: According to the author's notes, the Original Characters Daniel/Daan Yel and Purgatory were originally created by another user, Ngrey651/SaintHeartwing for his own Invader Zim fics. They're used here with his permission, as he and Zim'sMostLoyalServant are friends.
- Troubled Fetal Position: A thoroughly traumatized Gaz does this when her nightmare finally ends.Even so, she couldn't bring herself to do anything but hug her knees to her chest, shuddering as the night's events played over and over in her mind, burned into her memory.
- The Unfavorite: Contrary to how Professor Membrane tends to treat Dib on the regular (calling him "my poor, insane son"), Daan Yel reveals to Gaz that she is the one he subconsciously dislikes, because at least Dib has shown the initiative to do something with his life even if it's something Membrane doesn't approve of, while Gaz is interested in nothing more than playing her video games, eating her pizza, and beating up people she dislikes.
