*Looks over the little bit that she has written* Well, I never
thought I'd do this but this story starts out with Zim and Dib's
last battle. Usually these fics make me cry. Knowing that I've
written it makes me shiver. And this is the first fic that I've
started posting before I've finished writing it. So hopefully
I'll get it finished. Of course that will depend on you guys.
Also, someone from one of Jhonen's other works will come into this in the end. But that's all I'll tell you about that. Gotta keep you wondering about something! Other than what's going on in my mind that made me write this. It's kinda creepy. Actually it's something I've been thinking about for a while now and has nearly driven me insane till I cracked and began writing it during a boring science video. But enough about that.
And this is the best title I could think of. Sorry if it sounds corny. And I rated it PG-13. No swearing will be in it but there will be a couple deaths. Let me know if you think I should raise the rating for that. I just don't want to get in trouble. I'm paranoid of that.
By the way, I don't own anything that is owned by Jhonen Vasquez. If I did own things that Jhonen owns that would make ME Jhonen. Which I am not. So just read it and don't sue me. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Prologue
The sky was cloudy that night. The dark gray masses rolled overhead, blocking out the moon and stars and threatening to unleash the storm that boiled with in them. In the distance the faint rumble of thunder sounded then faded away.
Down on the ground, though, all was quiet. Quiet and still as if the neighborhood knew something was about to happen and wanted nothing to do with it. A tension in the air only increased the ominous.
The figure of a tall, thin boy in his late teens stepped out of the shadows into the light of a street lamp, the long knife in his hand glinted brightly.
"Come on Zim!" Dib called down the dark alley, which Zim had hurried into only minutes before. He wasn't sure how long he had been stalking the alien that night. Seconds had run into minutes, maybe even hours, as he had followed, hidden in the shadows, while Zim collected samples of various planet life changing colors from autumn.
"Come on Zim!" He called again when his enemy didn't respond. "This has gone on long enough! We settle it tonight! Once and for all!" For a moment nothing moved. Then, slowly, Zim stepped out of the alley. His hands were behind his back and he scowled at the human he had come to hate so much over the years he had been on Earth.
"Yes, Dib. I agree. It's time we put this to an end." Zim grinned at Dib's knife. "That's all you've got? By now I thought you would have something better to defend yourself with."
Dib crouched down, ready to spring once Zim made any move to attack. His eye twitched behind his glasses. "This is all I need." He hissed. With the knife held out in front of his Dib made the first move, leaping forward. Zim's hands came out from behind his back holding a ray gun. A bright red beam shot out toward Dib, it hit his knife and flew back toward where it began. Zim gasped and tried to jump out of the way but the motion left his back exposed. The ray hit his I.D. Pak, frying the systems and destroying it.
Zim fell to the ground. He lay there a moment before pushing himself to a sitting position. He reached behind him to feel out the damage. Only half of the pod remained and a sharp electric shock made Zim pull his hand back when he touched a broken wire. Now he knew how the last battle would end.
Darkness fell over him and Zim looked up. Dib was looking down at him coldly, half of his face hidden in shadows. The arm holding the knife was tense, ready to strike.
Zim studied the face of his rival, trying to see the boy who had chased his home from skool that first day, wanting to expose him for what he really was. Then he had been armed with alien catching handcuffs, now he held a knife. His long, thin fingers griped the black handle tightly. Dib's head, no longer abnormally large, fit his thin body perfectly, though the students of their Sophomore class still used it as a way to poke fun at him. His black, spiky hair, large glasses and clothes were about the only things that remained of the human Zim had first met.
"Well?" Zim said. "Are you going to kill me now? Or are you just going to stand there for ten minutes?"
"I told you I would stop your every move, Zim." Dib replied coldly. "You should've gone back to Irk when you had the chance. You wont have that chance now." Dib raised the knife over his head with one hand, Zim watched the sharp point shine in the street light, then Dib brought it down swiftly and plunged it into Zim's chest and pulling it out in one motion.
Zim flinched as the pain shot through his body. His hand went to the wound and when he took it away his black glove was crimson with fresh blood. As he looked at the blood Zim's lips curled into a grin. Dib took a step back when Zim looked up at him, still grinning. A look of fear flashed across Dib's face, he glanced over at the laser gun laying a few feet away, then he glared down at the alien again.
"See Zim?" Dib hissed. "It's over. I won, you lost." Zim's morbid grin grew slightly to show his zipper-like teeth and chuckled a little.
"Oh no, Dib." He whispered, barely audible. "It's just beginning." Dib continued to glare as his enemy slowly sank down to lay on the sidewalk and became still, surrounded by a puddle of his own blood. Dib watched Zim's body closely for a few minutes then bent down to wipe some of the blood off of the knife onto the grass. He straitened up again and began back to his house.
It was then that the rain began.
By the time Dib walked in the front door he was soaked and all the blood was washed from the knife. Gaz looked away from the TV only long enough to see her brother walk in soaked, holding a long knife and blood staining his clothes.
"Geese, Dib. Who'd you kill?" she asked, her eyes back on the TV.
"Zim." Dib answered. The iciness still in his voice. "The Earth is safe." He added then continued up to his room.
"You sound so happy about it, too." Gaz muttered sarcastically to herself. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
An hour later Dib sat at his computer e-mailing some labs in the city that he wanted to have look at Zim's body, which was wrapped in plastic in an old freezer in the garage.
After sliding the knife under his bed and changing his clothes, which had turned out to be pointless since he just ended up staining another outfit, Dib had gone back out into the rain to retrieve Zim. This time tough he took his car.
As he turned the corner and his headlights illuminated the site of his and Zim's final battle Dib saw something duck down behind the alien. He parked in front of the body incase anyone drove by and studied the small, quivering lime green thing. It seemed to be hiding from him, using Zim's body as a protective wall against the bright headlights.
Just as Dib was wondering if he should go back and get the knife again the little creature timidly began to sit up and peer over at him. Its black ears were drooping and the rain had matted the green fur and red splotches ran down its face with the rain and tears.
Dib picked up the plastic wrap from the passenger's seat and stepped out of the car. The knife wouldn't be needed. Gir watched Dib walk over and drop the plastic next to the dead alien. He paused to watch Gir. The two looked at each other in silence, Gir hugging Zim's wig closely.
Finally Dib looked away and returned his attention to Zim. Thin wisps of steam rose from the body as the rain burned his skin. But for the first time Zim wasn't screaming or trying to get to shelter. He just laid on the sidewalk, unnaturally still, a thin trickle of blood still ran from the long thin cut in his chest to mix with the rain and flow to the street drain.
Dib kneeled down and began wrapping the corpse in the plastic. He shivered a little as the cold water soaked into the knees of his black jeans.
"M-m-master?" Gir whimpered. Dib ignored him and continued wrapping. "Wh-what are you doing?" the S.I.R. asked quietly. He hugged the wig tighter as if afraid Dib might take that from him and wrap it in plastic too. Dib looked up for only a moment to look at the robot with an expressionless look then stood up and began dragging the macabre package toward the car parked a few feet away.
Over his years on Earth, Zim had grown along with his classmates. Something to do with the difference in the gravitational pull on Earth compared to Irk. This had always kept Zim and Dib at about the same height and gave Dib a hard time trying to load the body into the trunk of his car.
When he had finally gotten Zim inside Dib slammed the lid closed. Then stood and stared at the back of the gray car. The slamming trunk sounded strange. It seemed to make it final.
Zim was dead.
The battle was, after all these years, over. For good.
Dib had won and Earth was safe.
So.why did Dib feel like he was missing something? That he hadn't done something right? Something in his long thought out plan wasn't quite right. But he couldn't figure out what it was.
A small tug on his trench coat brought Dib out of his thoughts. He looked down to find Gir looking up at him sadly, rain streamed down his face. A few robotic tears mixed in.
"Where are you taking Master?" Gir asked the wig still held protectively close to him. He sounded frightened and seemed to know that wherever Zim was being taken wasn't good. Dib sighed and some of the hatred left him, making him feel empty and feeling sorry for little S.I.R. Gir had never really done anything to him.
"To my house." Dib answered. "Then I'll take him to the city where some scientists will look at him." Gir sniffed.
"When will he come home?" he asked. Dib looked at the trunk again, his face still in the expressionless pose it had been in since the moment Zim had died.
"He wont be coming back." He replied. He heard Gir sniff some more but didn't look down. Instead Dib walked around to the driver's side and got into the car. He was about to shut the door when he realized Gir had followed him and was standing on the sidewalk looking at him sadly.
"Go home, Gir." Dib told the robot. "Your mission is over." He shut the door and drove away.
On the sidewalk Gir watched the car drive away then began walking home alone. He rubbed the soaking black wig to his face and sobbed.
Back in his room, Dib pushed the send button on his e-mail and turned off his computer. Leaning back in his desk chair he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes tiredly. In his mind he had gone over the events of that night over and over countless times. Each time the feeling that something was wrong increased.
He grabbed the latest issue of 'Crop-Circles' off his desk and went to his bed, using the wall as a backrest, to read it. But he found that he couldn't concentrate on the articles. His mind kept wandering two hours into the past.
Stalking Zim
Chasing him into the alley.
Watching him fall by his own ray.
Stabbing him.
Zim grinning at him.
That was it. Instead of fear or anger or even pain, Zim had been grinning. More like a smirk and a grin together. But losing hadn't upset Zim. He should have been glaring at Dib! Or begging for help! But no. Zim had grinned. He had been mocking Dib! Even to his death Zim had refused to admit that he had lost! Refused to admit that Dib was greater.
Angry now, Dib threw the magazine to the floor. He jumped off his bed, went to his desk, grabbed all the paper from the printer and a pencil then went back to his bed. Sitting against the wall again, using his legs and a book as a makeshift easel Dib began to draw.
He drew Zim, sitting on the sidewalk, blood running down his uniform from the knife wound in his chest. The Zim in the picture glared back at him but something in his drawn eyes seemed to be mocking Dib still. He crumpled the picture into a tight ball and threw it to the floor where it came to rest beside the magazine.
He drew another picture, this one of Zim looking afraid. Somehow the alien's face seemed to sneer at him, as if hiding a secret Dib would never know.
So Dib drew another, then another, and another. He kept drawing until that horrible mocking laughter had finally left Zim's disguised eyes. Then he drew that picture again, adding more detail, making Zim more afraid and expressing more pain. Once he had perfected the image in his mind, the image that should have been reality, Dib drew it another dozen times. Until every piece of blank paper in his room was covered with a morbid portrait of Zim.
Until Dib almost could believe that that picture was what had really happened.
At 5:30 AM Dib laid in his bed, crumpled paper littering every square inch of the floor, and listened to the storm out side as he teetered on the edge of sleep.
As he slipped off into that dark void an almost inaudible sound drifted through his room.
Zim laughing. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Hey. Umm. I don't know how you like this. But I would like to know. It doesn't really sound like something I'd write, but it's been on my mind for weeks and I just had to get it down. I think I said before that It's the first full length fic that I didn't finish before I started posting so whether I ever DO finish is up to you guys. If you don't like it I'll just write the ending for myself. It's the ending that I've been thinking about the most. It should be good. Hopefully a big surprise. So.. Please review. ~HelgaGP
Also, someone from one of Jhonen's other works will come into this in the end. But that's all I'll tell you about that. Gotta keep you wondering about something! Other than what's going on in my mind that made me write this. It's kinda creepy. Actually it's something I've been thinking about for a while now and has nearly driven me insane till I cracked and began writing it during a boring science video. But enough about that.
And this is the best title I could think of. Sorry if it sounds corny. And I rated it PG-13. No swearing will be in it but there will be a couple deaths. Let me know if you think I should raise the rating for that. I just don't want to get in trouble. I'm paranoid of that.
By the way, I don't own anything that is owned by Jhonen Vasquez. If I did own things that Jhonen owns that would make ME Jhonen. Which I am not. So just read it and don't sue me. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Prologue
The sky was cloudy that night. The dark gray masses rolled overhead, blocking out the moon and stars and threatening to unleash the storm that boiled with in them. In the distance the faint rumble of thunder sounded then faded away.
Down on the ground, though, all was quiet. Quiet and still as if the neighborhood knew something was about to happen and wanted nothing to do with it. A tension in the air only increased the ominous.
The figure of a tall, thin boy in his late teens stepped out of the shadows into the light of a street lamp, the long knife in his hand glinted brightly.
"Come on Zim!" Dib called down the dark alley, which Zim had hurried into only minutes before. He wasn't sure how long he had been stalking the alien that night. Seconds had run into minutes, maybe even hours, as he had followed, hidden in the shadows, while Zim collected samples of various planet life changing colors from autumn.
"Come on Zim!" He called again when his enemy didn't respond. "This has gone on long enough! We settle it tonight! Once and for all!" For a moment nothing moved. Then, slowly, Zim stepped out of the alley. His hands were behind his back and he scowled at the human he had come to hate so much over the years he had been on Earth.
"Yes, Dib. I agree. It's time we put this to an end." Zim grinned at Dib's knife. "That's all you've got? By now I thought you would have something better to defend yourself with."
Dib crouched down, ready to spring once Zim made any move to attack. His eye twitched behind his glasses. "This is all I need." He hissed. With the knife held out in front of his Dib made the first move, leaping forward. Zim's hands came out from behind his back holding a ray gun. A bright red beam shot out toward Dib, it hit his knife and flew back toward where it began. Zim gasped and tried to jump out of the way but the motion left his back exposed. The ray hit his I.D. Pak, frying the systems and destroying it.
Zim fell to the ground. He lay there a moment before pushing himself to a sitting position. He reached behind him to feel out the damage. Only half of the pod remained and a sharp electric shock made Zim pull his hand back when he touched a broken wire. Now he knew how the last battle would end.
Darkness fell over him and Zim looked up. Dib was looking down at him coldly, half of his face hidden in shadows. The arm holding the knife was tense, ready to strike.
Zim studied the face of his rival, trying to see the boy who had chased his home from skool that first day, wanting to expose him for what he really was. Then he had been armed with alien catching handcuffs, now he held a knife. His long, thin fingers griped the black handle tightly. Dib's head, no longer abnormally large, fit his thin body perfectly, though the students of their Sophomore class still used it as a way to poke fun at him. His black, spiky hair, large glasses and clothes were about the only things that remained of the human Zim had first met.
"Well?" Zim said. "Are you going to kill me now? Or are you just going to stand there for ten minutes?"
"I told you I would stop your every move, Zim." Dib replied coldly. "You should've gone back to Irk when you had the chance. You wont have that chance now." Dib raised the knife over his head with one hand, Zim watched the sharp point shine in the street light, then Dib brought it down swiftly and plunged it into Zim's chest and pulling it out in one motion.
Zim flinched as the pain shot through his body. His hand went to the wound and when he took it away his black glove was crimson with fresh blood. As he looked at the blood Zim's lips curled into a grin. Dib took a step back when Zim looked up at him, still grinning. A look of fear flashed across Dib's face, he glanced over at the laser gun laying a few feet away, then he glared down at the alien again.
"See Zim?" Dib hissed. "It's over. I won, you lost." Zim's morbid grin grew slightly to show his zipper-like teeth and chuckled a little.
"Oh no, Dib." He whispered, barely audible. "It's just beginning." Dib continued to glare as his enemy slowly sank down to lay on the sidewalk and became still, surrounded by a puddle of his own blood. Dib watched Zim's body closely for a few minutes then bent down to wipe some of the blood off of the knife onto the grass. He straitened up again and began back to his house.
It was then that the rain began.
By the time Dib walked in the front door he was soaked and all the blood was washed from the knife. Gaz looked away from the TV only long enough to see her brother walk in soaked, holding a long knife and blood staining his clothes.
"Geese, Dib. Who'd you kill?" she asked, her eyes back on the TV.
"Zim." Dib answered. The iciness still in his voice. "The Earth is safe." He added then continued up to his room.
"You sound so happy about it, too." Gaz muttered sarcastically to herself. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
An hour later Dib sat at his computer e-mailing some labs in the city that he wanted to have look at Zim's body, which was wrapped in plastic in an old freezer in the garage.
After sliding the knife under his bed and changing his clothes, which had turned out to be pointless since he just ended up staining another outfit, Dib had gone back out into the rain to retrieve Zim. This time tough he took his car.
As he turned the corner and his headlights illuminated the site of his and Zim's final battle Dib saw something duck down behind the alien. He parked in front of the body incase anyone drove by and studied the small, quivering lime green thing. It seemed to be hiding from him, using Zim's body as a protective wall against the bright headlights.
Just as Dib was wondering if he should go back and get the knife again the little creature timidly began to sit up and peer over at him. Its black ears were drooping and the rain had matted the green fur and red splotches ran down its face with the rain and tears.
Dib picked up the plastic wrap from the passenger's seat and stepped out of the car. The knife wouldn't be needed. Gir watched Dib walk over and drop the plastic next to the dead alien. He paused to watch Gir. The two looked at each other in silence, Gir hugging Zim's wig closely.
Finally Dib looked away and returned his attention to Zim. Thin wisps of steam rose from the body as the rain burned his skin. But for the first time Zim wasn't screaming or trying to get to shelter. He just laid on the sidewalk, unnaturally still, a thin trickle of blood still ran from the long thin cut in his chest to mix with the rain and flow to the street drain.
Dib kneeled down and began wrapping the corpse in the plastic. He shivered a little as the cold water soaked into the knees of his black jeans.
"M-m-master?" Gir whimpered. Dib ignored him and continued wrapping. "Wh-what are you doing?" the S.I.R. asked quietly. He hugged the wig tighter as if afraid Dib might take that from him and wrap it in plastic too. Dib looked up for only a moment to look at the robot with an expressionless look then stood up and began dragging the macabre package toward the car parked a few feet away.
Over his years on Earth, Zim had grown along with his classmates. Something to do with the difference in the gravitational pull on Earth compared to Irk. This had always kept Zim and Dib at about the same height and gave Dib a hard time trying to load the body into the trunk of his car.
When he had finally gotten Zim inside Dib slammed the lid closed. Then stood and stared at the back of the gray car. The slamming trunk sounded strange. It seemed to make it final.
Zim was dead.
The battle was, after all these years, over. For good.
Dib had won and Earth was safe.
So.why did Dib feel like he was missing something? That he hadn't done something right? Something in his long thought out plan wasn't quite right. But he couldn't figure out what it was.
A small tug on his trench coat brought Dib out of his thoughts. He looked down to find Gir looking up at him sadly, rain streamed down his face. A few robotic tears mixed in.
"Where are you taking Master?" Gir asked the wig still held protectively close to him. He sounded frightened and seemed to know that wherever Zim was being taken wasn't good. Dib sighed and some of the hatred left him, making him feel empty and feeling sorry for little S.I.R. Gir had never really done anything to him.
"To my house." Dib answered. "Then I'll take him to the city where some scientists will look at him." Gir sniffed.
"When will he come home?" he asked. Dib looked at the trunk again, his face still in the expressionless pose it had been in since the moment Zim had died.
"He wont be coming back." He replied. He heard Gir sniff some more but didn't look down. Instead Dib walked around to the driver's side and got into the car. He was about to shut the door when he realized Gir had followed him and was standing on the sidewalk looking at him sadly.
"Go home, Gir." Dib told the robot. "Your mission is over." He shut the door and drove away.
On the sidewalk Gir watched the car drive away then began walking home alone. He rubbed the soaking black wig to his face and sobbed.
Back in his room, Dib pushed the send button on his e-mail and turned off his computer. Leaning back in his desk chair he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes tiredly. In his mind he had gone over the events of that night over and over countless times. Each time the feeling that something was wrong increased.
He grabbed the latest issue of 'Crop-Circles' off his desk and went to his bed, using the wall as a backrest, to read it. But he found that he couldn't concentrate on the articles. His mind kept wandering two hours into the past.
Stalking Zim
Chasing him into the alley.
Watching him fall by his own ray.
Stabbing him.
Zim grinning at him.
That was it. Instead of fear or anger or even pain, Zim had been grinning. More like a smirk and a grin together. But losing hadn't upset Zim. He should have been glaring at Dib! Or begging for help! But no. Zim had grinned. He had been mocking Dib! Even to his death Zim had refused to admit that he had lost! Refused to admit that Dib was greater.
Angry now, Dib threw the magazine to the floor. He jumped off his bed, went to his desk, grabbed all the paper from the printer and a pencil then went back to his bed. Sitting against the wall again, using his legs and a book as a makeshift easel Dib began to draw.
He drew Zim, sitting on the sidewalk, blood running down his uniform from the knife wound in his chest. The Zim in the picture glared back at him but something in his drawn eyes seemed to be mocking Dib still. He crumpled the picture into a tight ball and threw it to the floor where it came to rest beside the magazine.
He drew another picture, this one of Zim looking afraid. Somehow the alien's face seemed to sneer at him, as if hiding a secret Dib would never know.
So Dib drew another, then another, and another. He kept drawing until that horrible mocking laughter had finally left Zim's disguised eyes. Then he drew that picture again, adding more detail, making Zim more afraid and expressing more pain. Once he had perfected the image in his mind, the image that should have been reality, Dib drew it another dozen times. Until every piece of blank paper in his room was covered with a morbid portrait of Zim.
Until Dib almost could believe that that picture was what had really happened.
At 5:30 AM Dib laid in his bed, crumpled paper littering every square inch of the floor, and listened to the storm out side as he teetered on the edge of sleep.
As he slipped off into that dark void an almost inaudible sound drifted through his room.
Zim laughing. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Hey. Umm. I don't know how you like this. But I would like to know. It doesn't really sound like something I'd write, but it's been on my mind for weeks and I just had to get it down. I think I said before that It's the first full length fic that I didn't finish before I started posting so whether I ever DO finish is up to you guys. If you don't like it I'll just write the ending for myself. It's the ending that I've been thinking about the most. It should be good. Hopefully a big surprise. So.. Please review. ~HelgaGP