Chapter One:
In Which Everything Goes Wrong (As Usual) and Tallest Red Makes a Terrible Pun
Dib wished he could say that this was unusual.
He really, really did. He wished he could look back on this day and think about how weird it had been, how nothing had seemed to make sense, how he had never expected anything like this, but honestly, Zim screwing up to the point of self-destruction wasn't unusual in the slightest.
The fact that he might actually succeed in taking the whole planet with him however, was.
As he watched his enemy hanging upside down from the point of the shiny, metal contraption by the skirt of his ridiculously pink uniform, he reflected on the irony of that fact that if Zim actually succeeded in his latest endeavor he wouldn't be around to enjoy it.
Then again, neither would Dib.
Or anyone else.
Or the earth, for that matter.
He also reflected on the fact that he had only just now noticed that the tiny invader's uniform was essentially a dress, and wondered how in the heck he had missed that before. For a militarized planet aiming towards galaxy-wide domination, it would seem that IRK was actually pretty darn progressive when it came to gender roles.
He glanced up at the cracked screen of the monitor atop the rickety silver machine, "15:00 minutes until total system failure". Alright Dib, you've got fifteen minutes to save the earth, use them well.
Trying to ignore his pounding heart and the feeling of dread creeping through every part of his body like the blood in his veins, Dib did the only sensible thing, which was of course, to run around in circles while shrieking at the top of his lungs.
Once he had gotten that out of his system, Dib took a deep breath and assessed his situation.
He had nearly had a heart attack when the bolt of lightning struck. Not out of any sort of sympathy for Zim, of course, but it had just been so sudden. One second, Zim had been perched precariously on the top of his hastily constructed Seismic Disrupter (Dib wasn't exactly certain, but from Zim's ramblings, it seemed that his latest plan to destroy all life on earth was to simply shake the earth so hard that everything else fell off, while he bolted for the Voot Cruiser and left the atmosphere with Gir. How this was supposed to work was beyond him, but he had begun to suspect that Zim didn't exactly have a good grasp of the laws of physics) and the next, he was hanging upside down off of metal beam, charred and drooling.
Under any other circumstance, Dib would have been anywhere from pleased to laughing triumphantly, but any other circumstance did not involved a Seismic Disrupter gone haywire and about to obliterate the entire planet that only Zim had the ability to turn off!
Moments before the lightning struck, he had announced that he was "Turning the dial thingies of destruction to ensure the correct amount of seismic activity. Too much and the whole thing just blows up, you know? Wouldn't want that," and as far as Dib could see, every dial was currently set on max, and all six of them were locked. "Wouldn't want that," indeed.
Normally, he would have just turned it off himself, but for once in his life, it would seem that Zim had thought ahead, as the entire machine was password protected. He had scrambled up the shoddy tower of metal beams as quickly as he could, praying that lightning wouldn't strike the same place twice (It didn't do that, right? Wait, was that a myth? Or was that being a myth the myth? Oh well, no time for that now.), and tried literally every password he could think of, everything from "Doom" to "death to humans" to "All hail the Almighty Tallest" (And he had thought that earth had some stupid forms of government) to "Taco-Monkey-Hat" before realizing that it was hopeless. Knowing Zim, the password could be almost anything. Heck, he might even have let Gir choose, which in that case meant that he could guess for ten thousand years and still never figure it out. Who knew what passed for logic in that robot's mind?
Groaning, he swung himself over the side of the machine, landed precariously on the beam from which Zim was hanging, unhooked the stunned alien, dragged him up by his antenna, tossed the unconscious invader onto his back, and did his best to climb down with a dead weight hanging from his shoulders, fingers slipping on the wet and slippery metal.
Dib guessed that Zim's highly mechanized PAK hadn't been able to take the force of what could have been a billion volts of electricity coursing through it all at once, and had gone into some sort of a shut-down mode while it tried to repair itself, the result being a nearly-unconscious Zim hanging upside from his own invention, barely moving and drooling slightly as he made the same noises Dib would have expected from a clinically brain-dead monkey.
Heaving and panting, Dib mustered up the last of his strength and slid the rest of the way down the pole, dropping Zim and landing hard, right on his back.
Seeing no other means of doing so- and because he felt like it- Dib stood over Zim and repeatedly slapped him in the face. While cathartic, this unfortunately did nothing. If anything, it made things worse, as Zim's long, worm-like tongue was now hanging pathetically out of his mouth as he drooled, falling into the dirt. Could IRKENs choke on their tongues?
Think, Dib! Think! Slapping him hadn't worked, the sting of the rain didn't work, pain was (Unfortunately), not going to be the answer.
His gaze wandered to the metal device jutting out from between Zim's shoulder blades. From what little he knew of the strange device, it acted as a sort of miniature supercomputer, a backup device to the IRKEN's brain, recording their personality and memory. Well, when a computer froze you restarted it. Perhaps he could do the same with Zim?
Not having any idea of how this would work, Dib selected a spot on Zim's PAK at random and hit it as hard as he could.
Zim sat bolt upright, made a noise like a fax machine, and immediately fell back over. Okaaay… Clearly that one wasn't going to work.
He tried every combination possible, which resulted in deploying the PAK's monstrous spider-like metal legs, causing Zim to have some sort of a seizure, a variety of other strange noises, and the PAK to open up and launch a barrage of sandwiches directly into his face.
Wiping an absolutely disgusting combination of mayonnaise, mustard, and maple syrup, off of his face, Dib was about to simply sink to his knees and give an appropriately overdramatic cry of defeat, when an equally overdramatic cry of "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" reached his ears.
He looked up just as Gir, crying hysterically, hurled himself off of the metal platform and plummeted to earth, landing headfirst in the dirt. Why the lightning strike had't affected him, was anyone's guess. Perhaps he was just too broken to begin with? After digging himself out, he leapt at Zim and Dib, falling on his tiny metal knees beside his master's prone form.
"MY SANDWICHES!" Gir, shrieked, tears pouring down his face. "They was my favourite!" Sobbing, he licked what remained of them out of Dib's wet hair.
"Mmm!" The little robot immediately brightened up. "Never mind, they still taste good!" He grabbed a glob of mayonnaise from behind Dib's ear, sat himself down, and munched away happily.
Of course! The robot! In all of the commotion he had completely forgotten that he was there.
"Gir!" He shouted! "The machine! Do you know how to turn it off?"
"Of course I do!" Gir stood and daintily dusted himself off. "You just put in the password!"
Very helpful.
"And what is the password, Gir? He said, shaking the little robot by his tiny shoulders.
"I..!" He paused and screwed up his face as though deep in thought, "I don't know," he said, and sat back down on the ground with a little "thud".
"Well, is there anyone who would know?" Dib asked. He was grasping at straws, but at least it was better than nothing.
"Hmm…" Gir gave the matter some thought. "Oh! Oh! You coulds ask the string beans!"
"The… String beans?" Somehow, Dib doubted that talking to a dinnertime side-dish was going to help.
"You knoooooow," said Gir, blinking at him. "The string beans! They's green, and reaaaaaaal tall. I think almost… This tall!" he stretched his little arm up in the air above his head as far as it would reach, which, truth be told, wasn't very far. "They made me!" he whispered with a certain reverence.
Wait, green? Tall?
"Are you talking about the Almighty Tallest? Zim's leaders?"
"Probably," Gir shrugged, "You want some coleslaw?" he reached into the top of his head and held out a handful to Dib.
Ignoring Gir, Dib grabbed ahold of him by the clean hand and took off in the direction of Zim's base.
Of course! Zim's leaders! They might have some kind of override code! From what he knew of IRKENs, they spent their time roaming the galaxy, finding hospitable planets and wiping out whatever life happened to be unlucky enough to inhabit it in order to repurpose the planet for… IRKEN… Stuff. Alright, so he was a little fuzzy on the details, but that didn't matter now! The point was, that if the Tallest had sent Zim to conquer earth it must have some sort of value to them, and he guessed that it wouldn't be half as valuable if it were blown to smithereens. Besides, from what he understood there were only a limited number of invaders, so surely they wouldn't want to lose one if they could help it, right?
He bolted down the street, weaving in and out of alleyways, and impressed even himself by vaulting over Zim's yard gnomes and landing at the front door.
His landing could use a little work, he reflected, as he rolled head over heels through the door and into the house.
Standing, he rushed to the view screen, currently cleverly disguised as a quite frankly disturbing portrait of a monkey, found the secret dial pad hidden under the arm of the couch, and hit as many buttons as he could.
After accidentally contacting a very confused Vortion who cried out for his children, a giant blue blob of pulsating jelly, and a thorny-looking alien that just sat there and screamed, he shut it off and turned to Gir.
"Gir!" He yelled, "Quickly, dial the Tallest for me!"
Gir jumped to attention, stance wide, eyes red and glowing, "Impossible, access denied!"
"Come on!" He pleaded, looking for something, anything, he could use as a bargaining chip. "I'll give you this useless, rusty washer!" He said, reaching into his coat pocket and retrieving it.
"Okey-dokey!" Gir replied, taking the washer from Dib and smiling at the boy. He stuck his tiny robot tongue out (Wait, why did the robot have a tongue? Focus, Dib!) and punched in a few numbers on the dialing pad.
Dib took a deep breath, stood before the view screen, and found himself face-to-face with the image of a rather uncomfortable looking IRKEN communications officer.
"Yes, I need to speak to your leaders!"
"Er, I'm afraid that the Tallest are… Uh… Busy at the moment."
From off-screen came the unmistakable sounds of music and merriment, Dib watched, dumbfounded as confetti and streamers, bright red and purple, every one of them, rained down from the ceiling.
"He's dead! He's finally dead!"
"I knew it would happen one day! I knew it!"
"Woo-hoo!"
Dib had literally nothing to say as the Tallest sauntered across the view screen, each holding a glass of fizzy, bright green liquid, wearing party hats, and doing what he swore to Lincoln's ghost was a tango all the while shrieking with glee, "ZIM IS DEAD! ZIM IS DEAD!"
"What the-?"
"Oh hey, look! It's the kid with the fat head!"
Oh great, first it was big, now it was fat. Except it wasn't. Dib's head was neither fat nor big, thank you very much.
"My head's not-! Never mind. I really, really, really need to speak with you!
"Well normally, we wouldn't waste time engaging in conversation with such primitive, inferior life forms-" began the red one, "but since this is such a special occasion, why not?" finished the purple one.
"After all, with Zim being dead, there is literally nothing you could say that could possibly ruin this day."
"But… Zim's still alive."
The music came to an appropriately screeching halt, both Tallest looked at him in shock, and Red who had unfortunately had his partner in a dip, promptly dropped Purple on the floor (Dib wasn't certain of their names, so "Red" and "Purple" would have to do for now).
"Impossible! His pak's been deactivated!" said Red, as Purple pulled himself off of the floor and gave his head a good shake, "The signal came in over fifteen minutes ago! The whole thing is fried, kaput!"
"You're right about the "fried" part," said Dib, "but he's not dead! He's breathing and everything. He just got zapped by lightning and now he won't wake up. Although he does make some pretty weird noises now."
"He got himself hit-" said Purple.
"By lightning?" Finished Red.
The two turned to each other, sighed, turned back to Dib and said in unison, "Yeah, that sounds about right."
"Darn it," Red scowled, "seems like our celebrations were a bit premature. You!" He pointed at a tiny, green-eyed IRKEN who stood in the corner, "Clean this mess up!"
"I was going to declare it a national holiday and everything," said a dejected Purple.
"I know you were, buddy, I know," Red patted Purple's shoulder in sympathy.
"The lightning strike must have burned some of the PAK's circuits and set off the deactivation signal without the host actually being deactivated," Red pondered, "Dang it! I should have known it was too good to be true." He pulled the conical hat from his head and crumpled it in his claws, Purple did the same, but instead opted to throw it at the janitorial drone, the pointed end landing squarely in the poor little janitor's left eye.
"Anyway, listen, Zim's got this big machine set to blow up the planet, it's password-protected, and I know we're not exactly on the same team, but if you give me the overwrite code, then I can- "Wait a minute, why were you celebrating?"
"What do you mean, "why"? Asked Red, raising a non-existent eyebrow at him.
"Exactly that! You had party hats, you were… Dancing! You… You really wanted him dead?"
"Hmm… Yeah, that about sums it up."
"But… Why? I mean, if Zim's dead, then you guys don't get earth! And you've lost one of your elite invaders."
"You mean you really haven't figured it out?"
"Man, humans are dumb," said Purple, shaking his head sadly.
"Come on, surely even a primitive life form like you must be able to see that Zim is a complete idiot."
Well, he couldn't argue with that.
"The only reason he's even on your pathetic little planet to begin with is that we needed him out of the way. We didn't want him screwing everything up for the rest of the invaders, so we sent him to a planet as far away as possible."
"To be perfectly honest, we didn't even know if there was a planet out there."
"For all we knew, Earth could have just been a glob of space dust."
"Or a useless rock."
"Or one of those sentient space-molds that only wakes up every two thousand years."
"Or a giant ball of Havarti cheese."
"Wait, why would there be a giant ball of cheese floating in the far reaches of space?" Red asked incredulously.
"Don't stomp on my dreams."
Dib stared, open-mouthed, "You're joking!"
"Believe me, tiny human, we joke about a lot of things, but getting that egotistical, self-centered, idiotic, moronic, irritating, paranoid, completely delusional, mess as far away from us as possible, is not one of them." Purple looked him dead in the eye.
"What he said," Red added helpfully.
"You know, some people have said we're egotistical-"
"Not that they lived long after that, of course-"
"But trust me, when it comes to egos, Zim's is the size of, well, this very ship."
"You might say it's… Massive."
Purple gave Red the dirtiest look possible. "No, just… No."
Red shrugged, "Can't blame a guy for trying."
"Anyway, the point is, we wanted that little egomaniac to stop tangling our antenna and wrecking every other invasion attempt."
"Would you believe that the first time we tried this he almost destroyed our entire home planet?"
"Honestly?" Dib said, "Yes."
"So you have noticed!"
"But… But… Even if he's dumb, don't you want your invader back? Don't… Don't you want earth? If you tell me how to overwrite his machine, you can have it It's going to blow earth up into a billion little pieces!"
This was a lie, (He hoped) there was no way he would really let those slimy green… Whatever they were (Bugs? Were they bugs?) have the planet, but if it came to trying to use the earth itself as a bargaining chip, then so be it. It would be better to have to try to defend earth from a full-scale alien invasion and possibly lose than to have it blown up and guarantee a loss.
Both Tallest looked at him and smirked.
"Let's see, so, what you're telling us is, your sad little planet is going to explode with Zim on it, destroying not only Zim, but the annoying little boy who keeps bothering us?" Purple raised one antenna.
"Two for the price of one, huh? Works for me!" Red laughed, "See you later, head-boy."
"Or not, because, you know, you'll be dead."
"Arrivederci!"
Dib didn't even give himself the luxury of trying to figure out how an alien billions upon billions of miles away knew what "Arrivederci" meant. Then again, for some reason he had never questioned why they all seemed to speak English, either. Come to think of it, that was pretty weird. Focus, Dib!
He stared blankly as the screen went black.
That was it. There was nothing to be done. He was doomed. Earth was doomed. Doomed, doomed, doomed, doomed doomed.
Doomed.
Doomed, doomed, doomed.
He could hear it, actually, somewhere out there, the plaintive cry of "doom, doom, doom", as though the world itself were crying out in anguish.
Actually, it was more like "Doomy-doom-doom! Doomy-doom-doom! Doom, doom doom, doom!"
He turned around, and Gir was singing to himself, bobbing his head in time to the music he was creating. Well, "music" was giving it too much credit. In truth, he was just repeating the word "doom" over and over, to something that could only have been called a tune by a deaf orangutan.
"Gir!" He growled. Great, his last moments alive, and they would be spent being irritated by an idiot robot. "The world is about to end! Can you… Stop that?"
Gir blinked at him, "But I'm singin' the doom song!" he said, as though that explained everything.
"Well, could you maybe, not sing the doom song?" Dib asked through gritted teeth.
"But I loves the doom song!" Gir exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. "I loves it soooo much! As much as- As!" He took a moment to search for the appropriate metaphor, "As much as master loves himself!"
Wait a minute…
There was no way.
Even Zim couldn't possibly be that stupid.
And yet…
Dib took off out of the house at a sprint, rounding corners and sliding down slippery sidewalks as he ran, key words from his last two conversations repeating over and over inside his head:
"As much as master loves himself!"
"Egotistical, self-centered…"
"…when it comes to egos, Zim's is the size of, well, this very ship."
It was a long shot, the longest of long shots, but at this point, what did he have to lose? Nothing, that was what.
Skidding to an ungraceful stop, Dib found himself face-to-face with exactly what had started this whole mess: Zim's Seismic Disrupter.
He glanced up at the countdown clock. Three minutes left.
With a determination he didn't know he possessed, Dib ran to the nearest pole and began climbing like there was a pack of rabid sasquatches behind him. At least the rain had started to let up. Grunting and panting, he managed to pull himself up the pole and swung himself back onto the metal platform.
One minute.
Raising a shaking hand, he typed in his last guess.
At exactly 00:36 seconds left to imminent disaster, the machine's display screen lit up with a, "Password accepted! Mission aborted, have a nice day!" complete with an icon of a happy, smiling IRKEN.
Incredible.
Absolutely incredible.
He hadn't even had to type in more than a few letters.
Looking back on it, he was kicking himself for not having figured it out sooner.
Zim's password was "ZIM"!
Exhausted, Dib collapsed onto the floor with a noise of half frustration and half relief. He didn't like to brag, of course, but score one for earth! Score one for Dib! How many times was it now that he'd saved the world? A lot. Although it wasn't as though anyone cared…
But he wasn't going to think about that right now. He smiled to himself, relishing the feeling of success. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Zim's unconscious form begin to twitch, and after several minutes, the little IRKEN managed to pull himself to his feet, swaying back and forth, still drooling, while his PAK shot out the occasional shower of sparks.
He could climb back down. He could jump on Zim just when he least expected it. He could grab ahold of him and drag him down to the police station, antenna and buggy eyes on full display.
He could do a lot of things right now, but honestly, he was too tired. Leave it for another day, Dib.
What he would do was lie here and let the fatigue slowly take ahold of him, drifting off to sleep with a-
Thunder crashed in the distance, and Dib decided immediately to scrap his plan and do what he should do, get down and get inside before lightning struck again!
Author's Notes:
And that is the first chapter done!
I started writing this mostly as an experiment to see if I could write in the style of the show, just coming up with random bits and pieces here and there, but then it sort of grew into an entire story in its own right, so I figured I might as well get some feedback.
Technically this is my first proper fic, so any criticisms, suggestions, etc. would be greatly appreciated. And please, please, remember to leave a review!
Hope you enjoy this,
- Mags