Chapter One
The Battering Ram
The only person that Dib counted as a friend was a girl by the name of Emma Dribben, who had moved to the neighbourhood three months ago. Her father owned and operated a new observatory, and she often spoke to him when he called up with the coordinates of planets and comets that he hadn't seen before. She was ditsy and forgetful, though quite intelligent, and her love of stargazing kept her up until the early hours of the morning. This meant that she often overslept and was frequently late for school. Dib had become used to Emma's sudden, hurried entrances to first period, but nonetheless he jumped a foot in the air when she burst in now, red-faced and panting, gasping a breathless apology for her tardiness that quite literally fell upon dead ears. It was her yelp at the sight of the teacher that brought Dib back to Earth.
He walked towards the corpse slowly and steadily, forcing himself to take each step. Something on the floor had caught his eye. He picked it up delicately, turning it between his fingers. It was a button from the teacher's lab coat, small, shiny and round. And extremely heavy for such an innocent object. There was a large crack on it, and with quivering fingers Dib prised it open. A round metal disk fell into his hands, and as he lifted it towards his face for a closer look, it attached itself to the frames of his glasses, refusing to part with them. It was a magnet, and an extremely powerful one at that, as the arm of his glasses snapped off when he tugged it. He took his spares from inside his trench coat and crossed the room in two huge strides, standing straight in front of Zim.
"What the hell did you do?" Dib demanded, slamming his fist on Zim's desk. His books were all set out for the lesson that he would never do, and he was fiddling with a pencil, looking up at Dib with a warm, friendly smile that chilled him to the bone.
"The teacher-unit is nothing to do with Zim," he replied simply.
Dib had been about to strangle the Irken when a scream sounded at the door. Zim didn't move, but Dib turned to see Ms. Monday, the headmistress looking in, white-faced and nauseated. Before he had time to work out anything else, Dib, Zim and Emma had been ushered from the room. Dib and Emma sat outside the headmistress's office, where Zim was already being questioned. Dib had already been spoken to. In the horrified silence that had filled the corridors of the building, they could clearly hear the soft questions and Zim's dramatic responses.
"Now then, son," the officer said gently, not wanting to distress the odd, green child before him any more than he already was, "Start from the beginning. I don't quite understand what you just said."
"FOOLISH HUMAN!!! The desk LEAPT up and flew at the pitiful school-drone like a GIANT METAL DOG!!! His soft exoskeleton crumpled, and his organs were squished into a meaty soup! How can you fail to comprehend…"
"C'mon, now, lad," the officer cut in, slightly disturbed by the kid's enthusiastic description, "You can't really mean that the desk flew across the room of its own accord!"
"YOU DARE QUESTION ZIM?!?"
"I can see you're upset, but…"
Zim wrenched the door open and stormed out, sneering at Dib as he passed him. The officer sighed. He hated interrogating children. Dib walked in and sat down, clearing his throat importantly.
"I have something here that might help your case, sir," he said, holding out the magnet that was still attached to the arm of his glasses. "It was in his button. It's an extremely powerful magnet, and there may be more in his other buttons. I think that they might have attracted the desk over at high speed."
"I see…" the officer mused. He was a short, squat man, with broad, sharp shoulders, and his uniform was pristine. However, as with all of the officers in Dib's neighbourhood, he was dull-witted, slow and closed-minded. "Well, I'm sorry, son, but it doesn't seem likely. We're having the desk dusted down for prints at the moment, but in the meantime I guess you could help out by looking out for anyone that looks strong enough to lift that desk."
Dib groaned, trudging to the door. No wonder the crime rate in the neighbourhood was so high, with officers like these. Emma walked to the door to be questioned, but the officer looked straight through her.
"Erm… Aren't you going to question my friend, sir?" Dib asked eventually, and the officer shrugged and stomped off down the corridor. Emma rolled her eyes behind her angular, black and white glasses.
"They're breaking up early so that they can investigate. Shall we go back to your place?" she suggested, and Dib nodded. They walked out of the gates and back up the street, in silence at first. Conversation was hard to start with Emma, but when it eventually sparked up, it could end up being ablaze for hours.
"I think it was Zim," Dib began, and she shrugged, glancing over her eyeliner to the kooky green house as they passed it. She was the only person that was in complete agreement with Dib about Zim, though she didn't see him as a threat to Earth. In fact, she had shown signs of wanting to be friends with the Invader, which Dib would rebuff with a long lecture about the fate of the Earth should they let down their guard.
"I dunno, Dib. I mean, Zim seems evil, but I don't think he'd kill a teacher without reason."
"But the magnets… I've never seen magnets that powerful just hanging around. They could be Irken technology, and it would be all too easy for Zim to plant them in the buttons of that lab coat…"
They reached his house and walked in, and though the wind slammed the door shut loudly behind them, his father didn't call up to ask why they were home so early. Though, he probably wasn't home at this time. Dib neither knew nor cared where he was. They went into his room and sat on the bed, both shaken and nervous about what they had seen. Emma sat at the kitchen table and Dib made some coffee for them both.
"Zim's story is really annoying," Dib began as he stirred the liquid, "He's telling the truth, but nobody else will believe him. He's just leaving out the part where the magnets dragged the desk across the room."
"I guess the magnet theory is the only possible one," Emma said reasonably, adding in a sceptical tone, "Unless somebody picked up a solid metal desk and ran with it like a battering ram…"
Dib froze with the cup half-way to his lips. He turned to face her, eyes wide.
"What did you just say?"
"Battering ram," she repeated, sounding puzzled. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the note, unfolding it and putting it on the table in front of her.
"This was in my locker this morning," he said, and they read the words in silence.
'Beware, sea goat, the battering ram, swifter than the arrow.'
Emma furrowed her brow and bit the side of her lip. Dib had seen the expression enough times to know that she was thinking deeply, and left her to it. Under the bright kitchen light her long, constantly messy chestnut hair gleamed, and a spot of light reflected off her glasses. She and Dib were the only kids in their class with glasses. He still had the round, thin wire frames that were as inconspicuous as possible, but she had square, thick framed, black and white ones that drew attention to her round grey eyes and the liner underneath them. She had round, almost chubby cheeks, and he had a square, angular face. Whilst they were opposites in appearance, the two were interested in the same things, and Emma was the only one that listened to him about Zim, and Dib trusted her. She looked up at last.
"This is weird, Dib. The note, I mean. It could just be a prank, but I doubt it." This was the way that she started a lot of debates with Dib; saying the argument and adding 'but I doubt it' to appease him. "I mean, it has to mean something, but you only linked it to Mr Raise because I said 'battering ram'."
"But it makes sense. Zim likes a challenge; what if he's warning me about the murder and more to come, so I can try to stop him. Making things a little more interesting for him?"
"Or maybe it's not Zim," Emma sighed, "I'm sorry, Dib, but you are a little neurotic about him, you know?"
"You don't have to see the good in everyone, Emma," Dib said, glowering at her over his coffee cup, "It was Zim. I know it."
"Okay, okay. Sorry," she said, and her phone buzzed. She read the text message and gave an apologetic grin. "It's my mom. She's just heard about Mr Raise, she wants me home. I've gotta go. I'll think about this some more, though."
She pulled a black and white striped notebook from her bag and copied down the cryptic note in her round, swooping scrawl, shoving everything back clumsily and walking to the door.
"Bye," Dib mumbled, and she waved over her shoulder as she hurried down the street. Dib looked at her coffee cup. She hadn't drunk any of it. He swallowed the scalding liquid in one gulp and opened his laptop, accessing the video link into Zim's base. He had planted a camera there three months ago, and it had remained untouched. Emma could remain sceptical about Zim's guiltiness in all of this, but he intended to expose him once and for all.
Please review and I shall update soon.
Invader Zim belongs to Jhonen Vasquez, but Emma Dribben belongs to me. In fact, she's based on me (appearance-wise).
