Kay kay. Sorry this is a bit late, guys. I took a bit of a break to work on a Dib/Gretchen oneshot that I may or may not post at some point (although if you want to read it, it IS on my Tumblr blog, so you can check it out over there).

It's time for Dib's adventures in earth. This chapter's a little bit…weirder than the others, I think. Opinions held by the characters don't necessarily reflect opinions held by the author. So if it was too out there for your tastes, don't be afraid to let me know! On with the show, as it is.


Element: Earth

Humor: Melancholic

Associated traits: Somber, anxious, thoughtful, stubborn, introverted

The entrance to the cave was narrow. Dib nearly missed it as he walked by the grassy hill – the burrow was half-covered in weeds, dirt cascading down across the dark tunnel like a waterfall. He stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he spotted the little sink-hole. The map he was holding limply in one hand crinkled in the soft afternoon breeze while he stared at the cave.

This had to be the one. He'd heard that there were monsters that lived deep underground here, scrabbling around below the earth in great caverns, coming to the surface only to feed on the flesh of tender surface-dwellers.

So he'd read on the message board, anyway.

It was worth a shot.

Dib heaved his messenger bag around his shoulder, stashing the map away in one of the side pockets. His watch told him that it was only something like 3:00 in the afternoon – still plenty of sunlight left, and he'd parked Tak's ship only a little bit away. Certainly enough time for some exploring and note-taking.

He knelt down beside the cave entrance, feeling a blush of cool, dry air whoosh past his face from underground. The tunnel itself snaked deep down into oblivion. He couldn't see even a few feet past the grass-framed hole – only inky blackness and a whiff of earthy scent leaking out from beneath the earth.

Dib fished a little flashlight out of his bag, flicking it on and sticking it down into his chest pocket so that the light shone up around his face. He'd read too many horror stories about people falling to their deaths into unseen holes or starving to death in dead-ends to risk going down without a light.

Rolling his jacket sleeves back and straightening his glasses, Dib headed for the cave. It took him quite a bit of wriggling to work his big head and shoulder bag and heavy boots in through the narrow tunnel. Roots stuck to his clothes as he went, dirt caking onto his shoulders and gritting in his hair. Dib made a mental note to take a good shower when he got back.

Finally he managed to work his way in. The cave opened up quite a bit past the entrance. His light cast long, pointed shadows all around, illuminating jagged stone walls and a floor crusted with silty rainwash.

Dib walked on, descending into the edged darkness.

He tried to keep his ears open (if that even made sense), straining for anything that sounded like a snarl or chomp or swishing tail. Instead he heard only the distant drip-drip-drip of stalactites forming, one molecule of lime at a time. Occasionally there was the deep rumbling of the earth itself, moaning through the caves like the creaking of a ship's steel walls. It shifted in its own quiet, subtle way, he supposed, the great lava-floating plates rubbing against one another like debris bumping in the surf.

If Dib was unlucky he sometimes heard a stone falling, the sharp clatter stiffening his spine and running an icy blade of adrenaline up under his skin. He whipped his head around, staring hard into the darkness where his dinky light failed. Usually he just started to see weird colors and shifting nothingness in the black, so he forced himself to walk further on.

The idea of hallucinating down here was horrifying. He tried to find things to focus on. He stared at the white streaking and rainbow sediment that spread down across the cave walls like fingerpainting. He counted the jagged spikes that rammed down from the ceiling to meet their pointed stalagmite mates in the middle of the great underground rooms.

Here and there he found rocks that the gentle dissolving of water had carved into lumpy sculptures. Or he stared down into underground ponds, the water so perfectly clear and still that it passed for glass until he impulsively tossed a rock in and shattered the flawless surface.

Dib stalked out into yet another room, his boots clicking softly against the sandy ground. This one was smaller than the others he'd passed through, only about as big is his bedroom. Here the ceiling was smooth, unmarred by limestone drippings that pricked down toward him in toothy daggers.

He tipped his head up, toward the sky of the underearth, and doubletook because the scratches and dirt-stains he thought he saw there weren't flaws at all.

Instead the ceiling was marked with drawings. Here an antelope leapt across a minimalist plain, reduced to its simplest lines and purest, curving shapes. There was a lion, its mane brushed on by a fluffed-up reed as it stalked across the flat and dusty savannah. Each color was muted and muddy, the shadows etched with soot.

He tried to imagine some ancient boy like himself, crawling around here in the dust, deep beneath the sun-warmed surface. He tried to imagine lighting the place with a candle that he'd made himself, the spastic light flickering in a tiny circle as he painted the world above. His fingers flexed. Fingers that had built so much but created so little. Dib was no artist. The ancients drew these perfect, simple beasts and breathed life into them as they did so.

Dib turned very slowly on his heel, his eyes raking across every inch of the Stone Age canvas. He felt like so many pilgrims with their necks craned up in the Sistine Chapel, only here was a mural to the ancientness of his race itself rather than to a temporary deity.

He rolled his eyes at his own cynicism.

Humanity wasn't even that ancient anyway, he realized. Zim had certainly shown him that. The Irken Empire had been doing its thing for a billion years.

Dib's people were still rolling around in the dirt and eating roots.

Comparatively, that was. And literally on occasion. They were miniscule and barbaric, still animals in every sense, with their wars over patches of dirt and court television and internet filled with nothing but porn.

An animal couldn't make this, though, could it?

One of the hand-painted mammoths winked down at him, the wavy curves of its sketched-on fur seeming to move in the flickering light. Dib cricked his neck. The snap of his tendons echoed deep into the cave as he tore his eyes from the mural.

Even if Zim burned all of humanity to the ground tomorrow, these paintings would still be here. Safe beneath the surface, perfectly preserved in the cool air and pressing darkness. Such permanence had to mean something.

Speaking of permanence. Dib snapped his head around at the jagged cave walls, at the inky black tunnels that snaked out into oblivion, and wondered if it was still dark outside. He felt like he'd been walking for a while. He'd been stepping places no human had stepped in millennia, breathing air untainted and casting light on corners that had only ever known darkness.

He could make his peace with not seeing the Cheeby Forest Monster if it meant all of that other neat stuff.

Except…

Dib turned on his heel, his messenger bag swinging around his hip and the light from the flashlight wavering. There were four or five different exits from this room, all equally cavernous and black. He held out one hand, awkwardly, hoping to feel a bit of breeze from one of them, but the damp air was still.

His eyes flicked to the ground. Maybe he'd left behind a bootprint or a mark somewhere that would tell him which tunnel he'd come from?

The wonder and fascination that had filled him only moments before slipped into a fearful sickness. He felt chills sifting up under his skin, fingers shaking ever so slightly as he scanned every inch of the room for a sign, a signal, an anything that would show him the right way to go.

Dib tried not to panic. He tried to count his breaths as he took them, balling his hands into fists to keep them from shaking.

If he stayed here, the still quietness would drive him mad.

Or it could have, if his flashlight hadn't begun flickering.

Dib's mind flailed about just like his arms as he tried to yank the little light out of his pocket. He tapped on the bottom, flicked the switch on and off as the bulb strobed waveringly. Were the batteries dead? Was the moisture down here messing up the circuits? He wasn't sure.

The periods of darkness were getting more frequent. He tried desperately to keep the flashlight on, shaking it back and forth, listening to the batteries rattling inside as the earthy room flashed in and out of existence around him.

And then it was dark.

Dib tightened his fingers around the plastic barrel of the flashlight as if it were a weapon. He'd had bad eyes since he was a baby, but that didn't make much difference now. This kind of blackness was absolute. He held one hand in front of his eyes, feeling foolish in the motion, and saw nothing.

Where there had been tunnels and rocks and walls before was nothing. The air ached with silence. Darkness pressed in on him, black and thick like water. Crushing into oblivion.

This place was a purgatory.

He took a careful step forward, tapping around the floor with the tip of his boot. Throwing his arms out in front of him, Dib made his way to one of the walls. It felt coolly solid as he went. It was a relief to touch something tangible.

Dib stumbled along the wall, skinning his knuckles on the rough surface as he tried to stay close to it. He had no idea which way he was going. The ground wasn't sloping appreciably up or down. Maybe he was even going back the way he'd come?

He shook his head and kept walking deeper into the earth. Occasionally he'd half-fall into an unseen puddle and then panic trying to remember which direction he'd been travelling, the cold water soaking up into his jean and chilling him to the bone. Or else he'd ram the tip of his foot painfully into a stone or bruise up his shin.

Before long Dib was a walking mass of sores, and blind into the bargain.

Always dark. Always black. Every inch of rock that Dib's fingers grazed over was met with fear. The next touch could be a rock scorpion. The next dip in the ground could be a ravine that threw him to his death.

The weird underground pressure was making his ears pop. Everything sounded so distant, echoing, making it difficult to tell what direction it had come from. Like mockery.

If he couldn't find a way out, he'd die in the dark and the silence. Alone.

They'd find him, a thousand years from now, dried down to a bone-lined husk to be dusted off by archeologists.

"What was this boy doing down here?" they'd ask.

Maybe he was a sacrifice to an earth god.

Maybe he was banished for committing a terrible crime.

Or maybe he was just a paranormal investigator who tended to get in over his oversized head.

Something flickered in the darkness, forcing thoughts of death and mummification from his mind. It was gone as quickly as it had come, numbing over his eyes and leaving his brain empty in shock.

It had been a little burst of fire.

A match, almost.

Dib wondered at first if he'd seen it. If he'd seen the flicker and the shadowed stone around it. His eyes burned afterward, outlining the little fire where it had stood.

"Is someone there?" he tried, feeling stupid with his arms outstretched and his useless glasses and his limbs covered in bruises.

Another puff of fire, another glimpse around the cave. And there, in the instant of light, he saw it: a white-scaled monster. A sinewy, snake-like thing, entwined around a stalactite. Then gone.

Dib heard it speak in the darkness. Its voice was deep and rasping, underused, echoing around him in the humming air.

"Yes."

Dib fought the urge to run. He knew he'd fall and break his face and that would be the end of it. He fought the urge to curl up into a ball on the ground. His body went tight, jaw clenched, hands into fists, trying to hold himself together in his fear.

"Who are you?"

"Your kind called us dragons. Once."

Dib heard the lofty tone. It said "dragon" the way he would have said "paranormal investigator." With a pride that might not have been entirely fitting.

"You don't look much like a dragon. Dragons are supposed to have wings."

"Hmph!"

With a flash of flame, so close that Dib felt the hot blush against his chest, the dragon lit the room once again. Just for an instant. Just long enough for him to make out the long muzzle inches from his face, the dripping fangs and pale, scaled skin.

It breathed heavily on his collarbone. Breath cooler than his own.

Then everything was dark again. Dib shuddered silently in the black, with the creature so close, afraid that a sneeze or spasm would cost him his throat.

"Sorry. I guess that was out of line," he managed, his face turned away from the scaly presence that he felt so near.

"It was. Don't you beasts usually carry torches? Pitchforks? That sort of thing?" The dragon gave a little snarl with the word beast that made Dib stumble back a bit.

"Uh…I had a flashlight before. The batteries went dead, and-"

"Flashlight? What sort of weapon is that, boy?"

The voice boomed around him. Dib squinted pointlessly, looking for even the vaguest pinprick of light. Something to focus on. Anything that wasn't featureless and still.

"It's not a weapon. Or it wasn't, anyway. And I didn't mean to get lost in the dark. I came down here looking for-"

The word caught in his throat.

"For what?" came the hissing whisper and misting saliva.

"For monsters."

The void pressed in on them both. Nothingness thick with bad portent. Dib bit his bottom lip and felt his eyes starting to water.

"There are plenty of those on the surface, you know, boy."

"I know. But maybe if you could just-just show me the way back, I could get out of your hair and then-"

The voice snarled, throwing words into his face. Dib wished himself invisible. "And then what? You'd send a battalion back to destroy the rest of us? Is that it?"

"No!" he gasped. "No. I'm an investigator. I study things that no one else believes in! Why would I want to destroy something that justifies my entire life's work?"

Dib tried not to hear the echoes of deeper meanings in his words. He tried instead to listen for any sound of movement as the dragon continued to breathe on him. He waited for the feeling of fangs against his neck or fire in his face.

Instead he felt something brush his hand. Dib recoiled away, yelping a gasped "Nngh!" at the touch. It was cool and slick, muscular, and he tried to pull away as it wrapped tightly around his wrist.

"Keep still, two-legs. You'll frighten the fish, with all that yelping. The surface is this way."

The beast's tail yanked him roughly forward by the hand. Catching himself, Dib stumbled blindly on as the creature led him.

Dib wanted to be frightened. This thing was huge and strong and could clearly see in the dark and could breathe fire, whether it was a dragon or not. It could easily be dragging him to his death.

Something in Dib's brain always prioritized fascination over fear. That part of his brain was thinking about what forces of natural selection would cause an underground animal to evolve a prehensile tail. And that part of his brain forced him somewhat unadvisedly to ask:

"So what's a dragon doing down here, if you don't mind me asking?"

The reliable clicking of the beast's claws against the rocky ground came to a halt. Feeling the tail tighten and his stomach bump against a scaly back, Dib stopped walking.

"We did not choose this home. Your kind forced us underground," it snapped, shortly. Dib heard the warning growl in the voice in the darkness.

When the dragon started walking again it nearly yanked his arm out of its socket.

"Oh. Sorry. About that, I mean. Humanity…well, we can kind of be jerks sometimes. Some of us. I like humanity in general. Just…not…humans individually. Not all the time, anyways," Dib rambled, his voice trailing off at the ends. It felt nice to speak and be heard after spending so long in the creaking silence.

The dragon gave a little scoffing laugh, its fiery breath lighting the cave around them for an instant. Dib saw light reflecting off of crystal walls and water-slicked stone, the bleach-white beast lumbering in front of him as they walked. Then all was blackness again.

"That seems like quite a fine distinction to be making."

"I don't think so. Besides, it'd be too easy for me to give up on the whole saving humanity business if I sat around thinking about how annoying all of us individually are," Dib said into the darkness. He kicked around thoughts of the bullies at school, of the perverts in the news and the warlords across the seas.

He'd have given up years ago if he brooded too much over that.

"Saving humanity? I find it hard to believe that any such messiah would be stumbling around down here in the dirt," growled the dragon.

Dib was used to being so disregarded. Not really by dragons, but the general tone was the same. "Well, see, there's this alien that wants to destroy the world. I'm the only one who can stop him."

"What's so bad about that? I don't see that anything in this world is particularly envious. Maybe this alien will bring about an even better one."

Dib thought for a moment, and then gave his head a violent shake. "No, I don't think that's very likely."

They were walking uphill now, he noticed. Occasionally he'd skid and slip on the loose soil, but always the beast's tail pulled him upright. Maybe it was his imagination, but the air started to taste a little different. Fresh and wet. Not quite so still.

And then there it was. They turned a corner, Dib banging his knee against the edge of it as they went, and he saw a pinpoint of light glimmering at the end of the passage.

Dib tried to contain the hope blossoming in his chest. The dragon might still eat him.

The light burned his eyes, scorching thoughts from his brain. It was the most beautiful pain he'd ever known. Dib took deep, sucking breaths of the fresh air and for the briefest instant, forgot himself.

He made a mad dash for the exit. Only a few steps in, his wrist snapped backwards and he fell back against the dragon's side. For the first time since being down here, he managed to get a good look at it. The beast wasn't staring at him. Instead, it had milky eyes that gazed off into the distance, fixed in a blunt-snouted skull. Blind.

It did live in the dark, he supposed. What a fate for a species, though, especially one so sentient. Pushed underground by a more aggressive race, reduced to scrabbling around in the depths for sustenance. Trickling into oblivion.

Dib felt something shudder in his spine. This would be humanity if Zim got his way.

The dragon must have felt his shudder. It released him, snorting derisively, and turning its great bulk away from the light.

"Get out. Your kind makes the air smell foul down here," it snapped.

"Right. Thanks for…for helping me find the way out. I probably would have tasted good. If you ever need any help from a human, my name's Dib," he said.

"Huh. Fine."

With that, it descending back down into the blackness, becoming a lumbering sliver of silver until the cave's abyss swallowed it up. Maybe he heard the soft splashing of water as it slipped into one of the underground pools. Dib couldn't be sure.

He likely would have stood there a long time in the semi-dark, brain thick with ponderings and colors warping weirdly in his eyes, if it hadn't been for the yelling he heard outside. Turning to the light, Dib fell down onto his hands and knees and forced himself out into the open air. The voice was getting louder, closer, more annoyed.

"Dib!" it called, half-rasping, "Dib! Get your stupid butt over here! I hope you know that I will fill your room with corpses if you don't show yourself."

Dib dragged himself to his feet, glancing down at his clothes as he did so. Every inch of him was coated with dirt or caked with mud, his fingernails black and his jacket stained. Even his messenger bag was filthy.

"I'm over here, Gaz!" he called, finally. Despite all his underground travels, he hadn't gotten very far on the surface – the grasslands around here looked mostly the same as they had at the cave's entrance.

"-And don't even get me started on what's going to happen to that weird box under your bed."

A head of violet hair breached one of the hills nearby as Gaz trotted toward him. She had her arms crossed over her chest, stomping over to him with a heavy-browed grimace.

"How did you know where to look for me?" Dib asked. He started to dust himself off, noticing how Gaz very pointedly stepped out of the way so that she wasn't downwind of him.

"You left this-" she held up his map "-in your computer printer. Dad's pretty pissed. I hope you at least found a smaller head or a girlfriend down there."

"Nope, nothing like that. Sorry."

He gave a little shrug. Gaz heaved a sigh at him, rolling her eyes dramatically and storming back off across the grassy hills. "You better give me a ride home."

"Sure." Dib tossed one final look over his shoulder at the hole in the earth. He'd hoped to see a final flicker of light or whisper of the world below, but there was nothing. Turning back to his sister, he followed her toward the stand of trees where Tak's ship was parked.


I read on Wikipedia that there's a species of blind salamander that lives in caves. Ancient peoples would find them in the rivers after big rains and thought that they were baby dragons, and that the adults lived under the earth's crust in order to be safe from human hunters.

Okay also maybe I've been playing a lot of Skyrim but what it's not like that's a crime or anything.

I'd have to say that I probably relate the strongest to the element of earth. I'm a very earth person. Maybe that's why Dib is my favorite, who knows. Maybe that's also why this chapter is a little weird and description-heavy and pseudo-philosophical. Guess that was just me letting my element get the better of me.

And if none of that worked for you, then feel free to complain at me. If it did, I'd love to hear about that too!

Anyway, our last chapter with Gaz should be up in a week or so. Thanks so much, everyone, for all your positive feedback! You're awesome : )