A.N. Thanks to my beautiful reviewers:
Captain Blue-Hat Jack
Zantor7
Missy Lynne (heh heh, the ZATR is irresitible!)
greenjellohead (whoo-hoo!)
MasterFruitCake (you should feel special XP)
Suicidal RuBBerDucky (mooshminky was mentioned in some IZ episode, can't remember which. . . can't really tell ya what it is though. . .)
TripleS-18
DemonSurfer
Rahh Gumba Foo (XD I love Napolean Dynamite!)
TikTac
The flashback was written all last-minute like. So it sucks. Badly. Really. Really. Badly. In fact, just skip over it. It'll be a waste of your time. . .
Chapter three- The Third Chapter
Gaz snickers.
She just opened her front door, and Dib is standing there, covered in cuts and bruises. His hair's messed up, his clothes are torn, and his glasses are broken.
He looks pissed, and to Gaz, it's funny.
"WHERE'S KACER?!" he demands.
Gaz steps aside and points to her couch with an amused smirk, and Kacer's sitting there, sipping a mug of coffee. She looks up and smiles warmly.
"Oh, hi Dib-"
"THANKS TO YOU, I'M NOW KNOWN AS THE TOWN RAPIST!!"
"Who did you rape?" Gaz asks. She sounds delighted.
"NO ONE!!" Dib hollers, fuming, clenching his fists. "KACER JUST DECIDED IT'D BE A FREAKING SWELL IDEA TO TELL EVERYONE I-"
"Oh!" Kacer says, her eyes wide. "About that! Dib, uh-"
"WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"
"I paniced!"
"So you told everyone I was a rapist?!"
"Well, yeah, but there's a reason for it-"
"NO! YOU'RE CRAZY! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR- OW!"
Dib falls forward, and it suddenly registers to him that Gaz just smacked him upside the head. Against one of his bruises, no less. He looks to his sister, wincing.
All she says is, "Your voice is annoying."
So he shuts up and turns to Kacer, rubbing his head.
"Okay," Kacer says, suddenly seeming desperate to explain herself before her boyfriend proceeds in freaking out, "so I was throwing this surprise party for your birthday and I asked your family to help out to make an excuse for you to come here, cause I have no other place to throw it, but then I realized I'm horrible at keeping secrets, so when you asked about it, I freaked out and ran here, only afterwards, I decided to throw you a regular party instead."
Dib blinks.
After about a moment's silence, he says, "My birthday's not for another three months."
"Oh."
"I'm leaving."
"But-!"
"Now. If you want a ride back, you better come with me."
He turns around and his hand almost reaches the doorknob, but then Kacer grabs his shoulder and pulls him back.
"You can't go!"she protests."I already invited people!"
"I don't care-"
"But your dad's coming!"
Dib stops. He shrugs Kacer's hand away, but he also turns from the door.
"You are insane," he says. "You know that, right?"
Kacer smiles and nods.
"Okay. . . I'll stay. But there better be cake."
She squeals happily, throws her arms around his neck and kisses him.
Gaz looks utterly disgusted and takes a random bucket of water from her kitchen and dumps it over their heads. The now-soaked couple looks up in shock.
"If you ever do that in front of me again," Gaz growls, "I'll replace the water with acid."
She stomps away.
Dib just looks to Kacer, and they both shrug.
A light's shining in his eyes, and he feels uncomfortably warm. A blurry image of someone is hovering over him, but once things come into focus, he doesn't recognize her. She's an Irken and a nurse, judging by her uniform. And unfamiliar.
Whoever she is, she's saying something to someone, but it's difficult to make out. And in the next instant, someone pushes her out of the way (slamming her into the wall) and then they're clinging to him.
It's Tak.
When she speaks, it's muffled, but at least he can hear it.
"Zim, you scared the hell out of me!"
He blinks. He doesn't really answer, he just surveys his surroundings, and is surprised to discover he's not in a hospital, as he had suspected.
Just in a large tent. Lying on a stiff mat. Several others appear to be in the same condition. He doesn't know what's going on, and now his head is pounding, and he remembers the explosion.
"Where's Pin and Plix?!" he demands.
". . . dead. . ."
"Wha-. . ." Zim stares in disbelief, and then he looks as if he's about to cry. Or hurt someone. "How. . . how is that. . . no. . ."
"Just kidding," Tak says, completely stoic, "they're right outside the tent."
"That wasn't funny."
Tak shrugs.
"I guess not," she says. She sounds emotionless. A moment passes when they just look to each other. "Are you okay?"
"I demand to know what happened."
Tak sighs, then begins her explanation.
"The explosion was a deliberate attack on Irk," she says, "with an untraceable source, as the ones prior to it. . . it activated Minimoose's Doomsday device, but apparently. . .well. . .Minimoose blew up. . . dead."
"I said that wasn't funny."
"I'm not kidding about this."
Zim waits for her to smirk or make fun of him for believing her or something, but she actually looks. . .regretful. . .? He can't be sure.
"What about Gir?" he asks, almost reluctantly.
"He's fine, everyone else is fine. . . well, at first we were hurt, but our PAKs provided a quick recovery. Yours, however, was damaged, so you had to be placed in here, and now you're probably even more defective. . ."
Zim glares, and mutters defiantly, "I'm not defective. . ." then asks a moment later, "How long have I been unconcious. . .?"
"Mmm. . .about a week. . ."
"WHAAAT?!" Zim hops up from the mat, despite the fact that his leg's in immense pain (which he hadn't noticed until just now), and kinda attempts to run towards the entrance of the tent, but Tak taps his forehead, he loses balance and falls back.
"Are you stupid?" she asks over him, hands on hips.
"A WEEK!" Zim shouts, hysterical. "A week of my life completely wasted! I MUST get out of here at once! Think of all I've missed! The Tallest will think I've been slacking off of work!"
Tak stares at him, expressionless. And then she looks sad.
Wordlessly, she takes Zim's arm, and pulls it around her shoulder, so she's supporting him. She leads him to the entrance, then stops.
"You're going to see something," she says, not looking at him, "that I don't think you'll like very much . . ."
He's anxious, almost afraid to step outside all of a sudden, but then he's telling himself that's just stupid, so he allows Tak to pull back the flap of the tent, and then he feels like he's going to be sick.
He realizes now that there's not going to be work for him anymore. There's not even going to be a home. Because stepping out now, there's so much debris and dust, but nothing else.
Everything else is gone.
"Ladies and Gentlemen and robots and stuff," Pin said into her self-made microphone, "I bring for your entertainment. . . 'Pin and Needles'!. . .it's a band, so we're gonna play songs. . . okay?"
Tak, Zim and Mimi just stared from the couch, each nodding slightly. The living room had been altered into some makeshift concert. Bedsheets were hanging from the ceiling wires to provide curtains, random glowsticks were placed around the room, and in the middles of it was Pin's "band". Pin as the vocals, Gir on drums (two empty Irken coffee cans), Clox on guitar (rubberbands stretched over a piece of cardboard), and Minimoose just kinda floated above them, looking cute, ready to squeak at the appropriate moment.
So, with that, Pin turned to her brother, nodded, and the concert began. . .
For a second, Tak and Zim looked to each other and grinned. Pin definately wasn't a bad singer. Yes, the whole scene was pretty cute. . . that is, until Gir, who was rocking out perhaps a little too hard on his "drums", went completely nuts and began shrieking at the top of his lungs. Before anyone could stop him, he lifted the coffee cans and thrusted them at Zim's head.
Tak started laughing, until she realized he wasn't moving.
"YOU STUPID ROBOT!!" she shouted. "YOU KILLED ZIM!!"
"Daddy's dead?!" Pin said in alarm, dropping her microphone and rushing to her mother's side, tears instantly welling up in her pink eyes.
"Get up," Tak muttered, lifting Zim's head, "Come on sweetie. . ."
"W-wow," Clox said, joining his family, "y-you-you never call Dad 'sweetie'."
"Yeah," Pin said, "that is kinda weird."
"Y-you usually call him. . . uh. . ."
"'Zim!'"
"Yeah! Or 'Jackass'!"
They began to laugh, and then Tak turned on them, her eyes flashing.
"Shut up!" she snapped. "He might seriously be-"
"Tak?" It was Zim.
"Good, you're awake."
"You never call me 'sweetie'."
"That was a one-time thing, okay-?"
Before Zim could respond, Gir ran over, began dancing on Tak's head, which somehow knocked her out.
"GIR!! YOU KILLED TAK!!"
"I HAVE MAGICAL POWERS!!"
"NO, YOU DON'T!!. . .GET OFF OF HER CORPSE AT ONCE!!"
Pin and Clox, having lost interest in the recent deaths of their parents, made their way to the kitchen in search of a snack. Minimoose hovered after them, squeaking cutely.
"WHOO!! Lookitdat!" Gir presses his face against the window, and then his eyes begin to widen. "MAGICAL candies! I want one!"
"Aw," Pin says, standing beside him, "that's no candy, that's just a planet. . ."
"A glowy planet," JooJee says. She pushes between the two and kicks Pin's head with her tiny foot. ". . .hey Plix! How come Irkens can't be all glowy like that?! Huh? Huh? Huh?"
Plix, who's sitting on mother's lap, recording something onto his digital notepad, looks up and sighs.
"First off," he starts,"the illumination of that planet is merely the reflection of the light of this solar system's center star. Secondly, it would be physically impossible for an Irken to glow, due to the fact that our genes don't provide the option for such a quality, unless of course there is a mutation of sorts, but it's highly improbable-"
"Oh my Irk!" JooJee interrupts, her eyes wide."One time I sawed-ed this thingy on the screeny television and there were these mutating splorkian babies that were all jiggly-lookin' and they started poppin' up in people's freezy boxes and they were all like, 'Rawr!' and stuff! It was so weird! Hey Plix, why can't Irkens be all jiggly-lookin'?!"
". . .don't talk to me."
Plix returns to his notepad, despite the list of rather vulgar insults his twin begins hurling at him. Tak shoots JooJee one death glare however, and she amazingly shuts up.
Clox had been leaning against Mimi previously, quietly observing the ongoing stupidity, but now he's standing up and looking to his father. The voot cruiser's small and compact, yet Zim has somehow been able to distance himself from his family, and he seems out of it. But looking at him, Clox just thinks he's in deep thought. Or maybe he's trying not to be in deep thought. He may be six, but even Clox knows that these past few days haven't exactly been the most pleasant thing to have on one's minds (unlike JooJee, who will bring up the recent turmoil with a certain fondness in her voice).
After the explosion, Clox suddenly didn't have a house anymore. His mom's ship was destroyed, and he recalls the little fit Tak had thrown when she had discovered Zim's voot cruiser still in one piece ("How did this piece of crap survive everything?!"). They had spent a week waiting for Zim to wake up, and once he did, the family was suddenly told they had to evacuate.
"All civilians are being assigned a secure temporary living quarters," the drone delivering the news had said. "They'll be alerted once things have been restored, but until then, they are to stay where they're told."
Zim had cut him off, declaring that ZIM was no civilian, he was a certified military trainer, but the drone just stared him down and responded, "Well, your PAK must've been more damaged then we thought, because we recieved the data that you and your family are civilians."
"Well, maybe Tak is, but not-"
"SILENCE! Zim, you, your smeets and your mate will be transported to the planet Earth until further notice."
Earth. . . Clox's first home. If it weren't for the fact that their current home had to get blown up to visit it, he'd be excited. Although he knows Zim wouldn't be, no matter what the circumstances were.
He inches towards his father, then pokes his arm. Zim looks up, but doesn't say anything. So Clox does, even though he's not sure it'll be help. But he just wants his dad to be okay.
"W-w-when we, uh. . . get to-to Earth. . . m'gonna make a really,really big meal for us, 'kay?"
For a slight second, there's a flicker of a smile on Zim's face. He reaches down, rubs Clox on the head gently and says, "Okay."
End of chapter three. . .
I killed Minimoose. I bet you all hate me. They'll mourn more in the next chapter. . .
I adore Zim as a father. . . I know Sky and greenjellohead said they liked it too. When I was writing that last scene, I actually said "Aw!" out loud, cause I couldn't contain how incredibly fluffy this shtuff is. I wuvs it so. . . anyways. . .next chapter will contain:
- a crash landing
- Plix, having a breakdown XD
- a scene that was painful to write. . . which I'll point out during my next post. . .
I got stitches in my finger yesterday.Cut it on a blasted soup can. . .
