Barometer Rising
Invader Zim X Trigun
You do not have to have seen Trigun to understand this. It would merely help. Spoilers for later episodes of Trigun (somewhere around 20-24).
***
Author notes:
I own neither Trigun nor Invader Zim. This story is done without authorization
and without profit.
I discussed plot/bounced ideas with Rainbound_Angel, Lady Shadowcat, and Kat23. Thanks, guys. Don't expect fast updates. I'm in Organic Chemistry. I own nothing, nothing I tell you, except my ideas. So don't steal them. I know Dib's last name isn't Membrane, but I didn't know what else to make it other than Membrane. So NYA I'm calling him Dib Membrane. *Sticks out tongue at people who would complain* I make a cameo appearance, woo!
***
Chapter One: The Homecoming
The morning had worn on to the point where it was no longer new and fresh, but
was still too young to hold the promise of evening. It was late in the month
of December. The cold air seemed charged with a hundred emotions as well as the
warming smells of the upcoming holidays.
A young man dressed all in black walked slowly along, staring down at the
ground. His ankle-length black boots crunched in the frost-hardened grass. It
rarely snowed in their climate, but the ground would turn white with layers of
frost in spite of the lack of flakes. His long black trench coat brushed
against his legs and threatened to trip him when the wind teased at it.
The leafless trees reflected like skeletons in the lenses of his brown wire-
rame glasses. A few pieces of stringy black hair dangled down into his face,
getting between the glasses and his eyes. He brushed them away with a few swats
of his pale hands before jamming them back in his lined coat pockets.
The rest of his black hair would have reached down to his mid-back if it weren't so spiky.
As it were, it stood up before flopping over at the edges,
the tips reaching just down past his chin. Truth be told, it framed his long
face nicely and added shape to a wisp of a boy, but as people are inclined, he
didn't see it that way.
He wished his hair would just sit down, so that it would draw less attention to
him. He was the sort who always seemed to draw attention to himself no matter
how much he tried to avoid it. He guessed that was something he got from his
father besides his unruly hair. The thing he liked least was when people wanted
to play with it. He even hated that more than being asked, "Whoa, dude, how do
you make it stand up like that?"
Well, there was one person he'd willingly let play with it. A smile danced
across his thin lips for only a moment as he thought of her. She'd come with
him to finally meet his family. He only hoped they wouldn't frighten her away.
They were anything but a conventional group of people related by blood and marriage.
Then again, any woman who could capture this ghost's heart must have
been something out of the ordinary in and of herself.
He stepped into the darkened hallways of the university. Despite the lack of
decorations in the name of equal rights, he could smell the spice of holiday
baking and well wishing all over the hall. He raised his head and took it in as
one deep breath. It was so good to finally be back home.
His shoes clicked hollowly on the tiled ground, wet with slush being carried in
from outside and melted off of shoes. Everything seemed to have been decorated
in shades of brown and cream, from the woodworking to the paint on the walls
themselves. The brown halls were nearly devoid of life, other than occasional
whispering coming out of a professor's office. He passed the student lounge to find only two students there.
They had a game of Go spread out before them. The pale blonde in a leather jacket was winning over the heavier girl with multi-spotted hair and dark red glasses. The television was on. A young woman with
skin that looked slightly greenish, perhaps from bad reception, was reading
stock prices. It looked like the market was in trouble once again.
He walked all the way down the hall, wishing he'd worn something thicker than a
gray turtleneck over his torso. The wind seemed to be coming in from cracks
that had been long neglected, as this was the teacher's quarters, and they all
seemed to own space heaters to keep out the chill.
He paused in front of a heavy oak door with deep chips in the staining. A glass
window, treated so that it couldn't be seen through, loomed from the middle of
the door up to where the door met the doorframe. Written on it, in yellow
letters that had begun to peel off only recently, were three names. He reached
out, his long fingers curled up, and knocked lightly on the glass.
A moderately tall, thin woman wearing thick blue goggles opened the
door. "Yes?" she asked, her voice betraying a lisp that even years of speech
therapy hadn't completely eliminated. "What, you don't recognize your own son?"
he asked, eyes glittering with good humor.
"Alex…?"
~
40 years prior
~
Dib Membrane walked alone; his shoulders slumped forward as if he
carried the world on his back and not just his black backpack. His head was
down, the long spikes of his hair hanging behind his head. Everyone said it was
big, but… it wasn't! His head was just as normal in size and everyone else's.
True, it did contain more thoughts than the average child, but that did little
to comfort Dib. The other students neither saw nor cared about his private
thoughts. They simply saw the freak, the overly pale kid in black who couldn't
run or play kick ball as well as they could. So they left him on the fringes
of child society, the most painful banishing that anyone could ever receive in
their lives.
Most children were too young to rationalize, to realize how lucky they were not
to be one of the sheep. Dib was different. He considered himself a visionary.
He lost himself in his own world of aliens so that he wouldn't have to think
about how he was the alien. Not an alien from another planet, but an alien in
the cruelty of playground life. When your life hurts so much that living feels
like dying, you find things to obsess about, to keep your mind from wandering
back to how much pain you're really in.
Most children in the hallway ignored him. He wasn't worth snickering over, but
he was still worth the occasional stare. A couple of younger kids moved to get
out of his way as he silently stalked past, but most didn't notice or care if
he was alive. After all, he was simply "crazy Dib." You only paid attention to
crazy Dib if you were feeling down in the dumps and needed something to lift
your spirits with.
He slammed his locker, letting the dull thud echo off the walls and through his
head. Day in and day out, the same dull routine. There had to be something more
to life than this, but what? He'd tell everyone Zim was an alien, Zim would
deny it, and then he'd stop some insane plan of Zim's to conquer the Earth.
Well… it was still better than nothing, even if it did make everyone think he
was crazier than they'd ever thought he was before.
Dib shivered a bit as he sat in class. The windows had cracks in them that the
school couldn't or didn't afford to fix. He was grateful for his thick coat. A
few of the kids behind him, refusing to wear anything but trendy tank tops,
shivered violently and tried to ignore the fact that their lips and fingertips
were turning blue.
Ms. Bitters was giving some lecture up front about how human overuse of
resources had doomed the entire plant to a slow "doom, doom, doom," when the
doorway flew open. Mrs. Rudstand stood there, gasping for breath. The top of
her polo shirt hung open. Her normally immaculate ash blonde hair hung down in
wild locks around her shoulders. Her glasses were all the way on the end of her
nose, dangling and threatening to fall off. She grasped at the doorframe,
clinging to it like her life depended on it.
"Turn on your television! Turn on your television!" she cried, then was gone
down the hallway. Only the sounds of her sneakers echoing remained as lingering
proof that she'd even paused there.
"I can't even teach a class in peace anymore," Ms. Bitters growled, digging out
the remote that operated the badly battered Sony. She kept that under lock and
key, as she didn't feel that television had a place in teaching. It was another
thing that would only "doom children's brains to premature rot," if Dib could
remember the lecture correctly. Then again, it wasn't hard to remember the same
thing repeated multiple times.
The screen seemed to be mostly fuzz, with a man's voice occasionally cutting
through the snow.
"Attention. Three large asteroids detected heading towards Earth current speed…
twelve hours… impact," the voice managed to choke out. "Giving off magnetic
adiation… communication satellites, telescopes… all down… can't get through the
radiation. Impact zone over… New England… 30 mile wide crater… ash…" Then,
suddenly, the voice became clear. "If everyone's going to die, why am I sitting
here reading the news? Jessi, get over here without your clothes on in thirty
seconds or less!" Then, the voices returned to nothing but static.
Kids who had seen Armageddon where whispering and poking one another. Those who
hadn't certainly wouldn't admit to it, so they were doing the same. They were
just a bit fuzzier in the amount of details they used.
"Well, it looks like I was right. All of you are doomed," Ms. Bitters commented
dryly. "Since there's no point in teaching you anymore, as the sun will be
choked out and we'll all be dead from starvation within a few weeks, class is
dismissed so that you can spend the rest of your day crying and whining or
contemplating the taste of human flesh when you're forced into cannibalizing
the dead."
The class was out of the room faster than would have seemed possible, some of
them choosing to exit via the windows instead of the door. Finally, only Dib
and Zim remained. The big headed boy with the spiked black hair stared at the
green-skinned child with enormous eyes.
"Oh, just do it," Dib sighed.
Zim broke into hysterical laughter, pointing at Dib and doubling over as he
quickly depleted his air supply. After his laughter had died down into hiccups,
he stood upright. "Looks like I win," he announced, wiping a way a few drops
of laughter-caused Irken tears. "Those meteors will cause a cloud of ash to
rise up, blocking out the sun and destroying life on your planet, and I'll
return home as a war hero. See-ya, Dib-human!" Zim called, sauntering out of
the room with a casual flip of his gloved hand.
"I hate that alien," Dib sighed emotionlessly. His mouth felt dry. There was
nothing left to swallow, and nothing left to say. No, he couldn't think like
that. Dib shook his head vigorously. Whether they knew it or not, he'd saved
the Earth from Zim numerous times. He could certainly save it from an asteroid.
Dib ran home, praying the whole way that he could finish the necessary repairs
to get Tak's abandoned ship in the air… and fast.
~
To Be Continued
(Note: This was written WELL before the release of The Xmas Special.)