The Thirteenth Human
Chapter One: Counseling Doesn't Help
Any silence with a counselor was not comfortable, especially one that involved Mr. Dwicky. The thin man sat across from Dib, his back curved into his fluffy chair and his hands knotted tightly over his lap. A solemn look had replaced his normally chipper countenance, and he reached up to nervously twist his diamond earring before making eye contact with the boy.
"Well?" Dib growled, still not happy to be in the same room as his elementary skool guidance counselor. "Are you going to say anything?"
Dwicky blinked quickly and pursed his lips. "You fly into my ship from nowhere, tell me my race is dead and you needs my help, and try to beat up my commanding officer because your head got called big," the taller man sat up a bit straighter, going into 'fix the crazy kid' mode. "Well, if the human race is gone, I don't see what we can do to help," Mr. Dwicky said in a near-spiteful tone, "Why don't you just find a nice alien race to chill with and silently take over the empire, eh?"
"You don't believe me!" Dib yelled in a rage, standing up from his poufy grey chair, "I come to the only other human in the universe, and you don't believe me! Again!" He threw his hands up in the air dramatically, his battered trench coat whipping about his calves at the sudden movement. "The Irken Empire wiped out our race!" He grabbed Dwicky's collar, shoving the man deeper into his chair. "Zim killed them all!" Dib masked his shattered sobs with a raise in his voice, causing a Plookesian guard by the door to become edgy. The humans' noses were nearly touching, with Dib's flushed face clashing violently with Mr. Dwicky's pallor. "You don't even care, do you? Huh? Huh?"
The brown eyed man was dumbstruck. Dib didn't seem any more... stable... then the last time they met, that was for sure. "I-" he stuttered like a nervous child, "I'll hear you out."
With that sentence, the pressure vanished entirely from the man's chest, and Dib was magically back in his space-chair, adjusting his glasses as if he had never almost attacked the ex-counselor. "Well, it all started in third period-"
Oh god, he was going to go on a monologue...
"-Zim stole some chemicals from the lab, and then he-"
Dwicky was about to interrupt and tell the black haired boy to get to the point, he really didn't care about how Zim did what he did. He wanted to know the why and with what. The boy seemed to sense this though, and his honey eyes narrowed like a cat's.
"He created a virus, like AIDS on crack. It moved through the air, water supply, bugs, everything." Dib crossed his arms over his chest. "Only one in every million had a resistance or something like that."
Jaw slipping open, the pale man leaned forward, focusing all his attention on Dib. The boy's story was like a horrible accident, he almost didn't want to stop looking. A shaft of light from above illuminated the attentive man's hands, highlighting the tensed muscles.
"The armada came two days after he released his virus. I messed up my one chance to stop him, because he beat me in a fight. He told me that they weren't going to come and take over before, but then he found out how good Earth soda was or something..." he paused, a dry chuckle coming out of his throat. "It was something stupid like that; I wasn't paying full attention, 'cus concussions suck." Dib nodded, more to himself than the raven haired man across from him. He pushed some of his pitch black hair away from his eyes and looked up at Dwicky. "I may not have been able to stop him on Earth, but I have another chance.
"I got away in an Irken ship I rebuilt years ago, and now, I can stop him from doing that ever again! We can stop the empire! We can do this, Mr. Dwicky. I can't take them alone!" His posture had changed drastically throughout his speech, and his quiet resentment had been replaced with a passionate fire. He made a fist in the air in front of him, pulling the arm down in a gesture of victory. "Zim may have won the battle, but as soon as he did, he started a war."
Dwicky wasn't so enthusiastic. He let out a sigh and leaned back once more. It made sense for the Irkens to destroy a planet for something trivial like soda or good snacks. What didn't make sense was how Zim had pulled off a plan that was... clever. Over the ten or so minutes that Mr. Dwicky had met the petite Irk, he could tell Zim was much less smart than the rest of his race. (He had accidently misjudged the second Irken he met to be like Zim, and she wasn't too happy about it. Dwicky had the scars to prove it.)
A few minutes past, Dib slowly wilting back into his upset mood the longer the awkward silence dragged on.
"The Empire is huge. It dominates most of the galaxies in this region of space, and it has about 90% of the sentient, intelligent life under its control. If you want to fight that, go ahead. I'm staying here with the Plookesians."
Standing up sharply and pivoting on the heel of his long boots, Dib turned to leave the room. His strides were long as he walked away, but what he really wanted to do was go and beat the crap out of Dwicky. "I always knew you were a coward," Dib hissed as the automatic door swung open to let him leave the older man's living quarters, "and it's all your fault too, for taking that camera." With that, Dib walked out, leaving Dwicky with his jaw down and eyes wide. He never did manage to be a very helpful counselor, much to his dismay.
Dib had never been a very colorful speaker, but at that moment, he found himself making up swear words. He had already used all the existing ones on Dwicky, but the young boy still felt kind of like a homicidal maniac. Dib had spent weeks -no, months- searching for any Plookesian ships. He had been flying through Irken Empire, getting shot at by the occasional PMSing alien, and nearly suffocating on foreign atmosphere twice. Not that he expected Dwicky to press a button and solve all of his problems, but he was a counselor! It was his job to help people!
Or, was his job.
Letting out another frustrated cry, Dib punched the side of his cockpit, bruising his knuckles and leaving a small dent in the metal. Temper tantrums were childish, he knew, but frankly, the honey eyed teen had a lot of anger to vent.
It was better to use his ship than Dwicky's face.
"Sir, the Resisty ship has been destroyed." The moderately tall Irken said past his high collar, addressing his superior.
"'kay," his commanding officer responded, dropping his head angled back against his high-backed pink chair. "what can we do now?"
"Only patrol this region of space, Sir."
"Ugh..." The commander thudded his head against the back of the chair like a small child would smack his forehead into a wall. No one told him that being a fleet commander would be so... boring. He missed being an Invader, but after he had brought humanity to its knees and taken the secret of their soda, the Tallest wouldn't let him do anything as low as invading ever again. He had his own fleet now, and was in charge of a rather large sector of the Empire. "You!" Zim yelled out, pointing to the only female Irken on the bridge. Her curled antennae perked towards the sound of the commander's voice, indicating that he had her full attention. "blow something up!"
Upon hearing his command, the female Irk lowered her antennae again and began to type something on the glowing purple monitor in front of her. "Fleet Commander Zim, I have been given strict orders from the Almighty Tallest not to take orders from you unless the situation commands it."
Zim squinted one eye half shut and left the other one open, taking a deep breath. Stupid orders, he was her commander, she should only listen to him!
Then again, the Tallest had probably put the limits on his command to prevent a repeat of Operation Impending Doom I.
Not that Zim knew why, he blew up more than everyone else, even Skooge!
Eh, whatever. Zim sighed as he stood up, the long mauve robe he wore pooling regally around his ankles. It was made for an Irken taller than he. "I am going to check the ship's hallways for big-headed alien creatures bent on destroying us, but worry not, the amazing ZIM shall return!" He bellowed, not waiting for a response as he strutted off of the bridge.
The hallway was much more silent than the room Zim had been in prior, and the silence gave Zim time to think. Maybe the thing he missed most about his time as an Invader was the Dib-worm. Not in a squishy love-pig way, Tallest, no, but in a sport kind of way. The Dib had been a fun game, kind of like chess.
Chess with fire, extreme hide and seek, and pointy weapons.
Oh, and that time with the pale purple penguin people. Zim snickered to himself as he remembered the Dib-stink being stabbed in the leg by one of the razor flippers the penguins wielded. Good times, goooood times.
It was too bad the Dib was dead. Zim could have probably used him as a moving target to chase after with his fleet. Letting his left antenna fall lightly over the side of his jawbone and his eyes lid slightly, the teenage alien stepped into his private quarters and locked the door. The room was equipped with everything he could need, like escape pods, some technological tools for his PAK, and other creature comforts. He grabbed some powder candy and a vanilla flavored stick to dip into it, his favorite.
GIR had taken a lot of his candy during his time on Earth, and it was a constant headache to the great Invader Zim to need to find more of his sweets.
Though, he didn't need to deal with GIR anymore either though. The Irken boy let out a happy hum upon realizing this for the hundredth time; it always pleased him to remember how he never needed to deal with that metal annoyance ever again. Setting down on the couch and turning on the television via an electric pulse from his PAK, Zim let his body relax. Just as his favorite program was about to come on though, the power went out.
"What is this!" Zim bellowed to the empty space around him, instantly on his feet and pointing accusingly at the darkness. "You FILTH!" The livid green alien marched over to the door and slammed one of his clawed fists into it, effectively denting the hard Irken metal and scuffing his plastic glove. The opening mechanism was not functioning. Zim was trapped. "Someone, open the door of face the unrelenting wrath of me, ZIM!" He yelled, knowing in the back of his mind that the metal was soundproof and no one knew he was in his quarters.
Stepping back a few paces and arming his spider limbs, the haughty Irken prepared to charge the door with lasers. "Hyahhh!" he yelled, firing the concentrated light beam at the door and disintegrating it into a large ovular opening. Zim stepped through the glowing hole, careful to avoid the white-hot corners and shrugging when he saw the other three or four holes his laser blast had left in the adjacent hallways. He could have a drone fix that after he executed the idiot who screwed up and made the power go out.
/Tep, tep, tep/
Zim whirled on his heel, PAK limbs flying out and eyes darting wildly from side to side. Those were footsteps, no doubt about it. No Irken would come into the hallway without announcing himself, and no machine could make a sound that organic. There was no light in the hallway for Zim's eyes to focus on, not even any ultraviolet florescence from the emergency lights. "Show yourself!" he yelled near-manically as the footsteps came to an abrupt halt.
The lights flared to life, making the Irken Invader cry out as his eyes tried to adjust. He saw a blurry figure rushing him. Pale pink flesh tumbled into him as the creature's body met his, and sooty black hair splashed across Zim's face as they crashed into the ground. A pair of yellow eyes locked with the magenta ones for one moment as the fist flew at his head,
and then everything was dark again.
a/c: Well, that's chapter one, I'm sorry it took so long to get up, I frankly didn't think anyone would take an interest in this... On that note, thank you so much, Dlbn, for your review, it made my week =) (and to the people that added this story to their fav/follow lists, thankies~)
Anyone else that happened to click here, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and will come back for more!
P.S. The chapters will get longer, I promise