A/N: I have not abandoned everybody. It's just that Sorry Mastah! has hit such a block. So…here. Future fic for you all. Bluh bluh huge procrastinator.

I'm Not Dead

Dib, no matter what you used to outwit me, it never happened. And no matter how many times I constructed something wonderful to use against you, I was never confident. The world was against either of us winning.

So when you finally did do something successful, maybe it was just a glitch in the universes' great programming sequence. Maybe you had finally cracked the code. But however you did it; you laughed a while once you saw me lying on the ground with that broken tube against my skull. I don't think you even knew you were laughing. It was unnerving to hear you do that.

You thought I was gone then, and after you laughed you just stared. I wasn't exactly fit to keep time then, but it must have been a solid ten of your Earth minutes. You just staring at your sworn enemy, broken on the ground.

I wondered if you had had enough yet.

You took a solid hold of my ankles and started to drag me disrespectfully across shattered glass and twisted metal while I could see the blurry figure of Gir, his previously cyan eyes dull grey – and most of his head bashed in. Oil and whatever liquids Gir had ingested recently pooled around him as if blood.

You decided that it would be incredibly hard to lug me around, and suspicious as well. Shoving me in a human duffel bag was sincerely the best that you could come up with, Dib? Pitiful. But nevertheless your new specimen came back to your house unharmed. Your camera emitted flash after flash and soon my eyes were burned with all that light.

You struck up a conversation and deep debate with that Eyeball network of yours, and finally your evidence was proven that indeed I was the figurative "spider" that they kept mentioning.

There on your carpet was the place I finally slipped away.

But my suffering was endless, and I was only an iota aware of everything that went on after that. A flurry of happy shouting, and the Dib-sister silencing you violently, and she went stiff when she caught sight of what was lying on your floor. She threatened to reveal everything to your nurturer, and you simply agreed.

Then vans and more flashing of cameras. Authorities' voices confirming that yes, indeed I was gone from that plane of existence.

I won't go into detail of what ensued quickly after that, because vividly I remember you green-faced and sick after only getting a glimpse at what an Irken looks like on the inside. You were never cut out for actual gore such as that.

But now I am floating in pieces, sewed up and in a tube of goo that seems neither viscous nor liquid – dead to the world.

Of course, that's what you think, Dib, don't you?

Unfortunately for you, you never were able to see that advanced technology of Irkens instantly protect itself against prying hands and eyes of alien species; it frying a scientist straight to the depths of… wherever scientists go. My PAK was always so well equipped.

Really, I am a piece of metal behind lead glass, that backpack you always knew I wore, watching you grow since that day almost ten years ago today. I have learned much about you. Would you like to know something in return, Dib? I don't want to shock you, but:

I'm not really dead.

Catch and kill me if you can.