Disclaimer: The same as the last couple chapters, I don't own anything.
A/N: Another chapter, hope you like.
Warnings: All warnings still apply. Rating my go up, actually I think I will just for safety's sake.
Chapter 3: IZ Who?
Zim's hands clenched into fists as he stalked down the hallway, shoving people that got into his way although most had given him a wide berth at the expression on his face. The Dib had unsettled him so badly when he had first ran into the human, and Zim hadn't recovered yet. Why had the Dib come to the city? How had the boy found him? And what was he going to do now?
All his plans would be ruined if that Earth monkey found out who he really was. And it was only a matter of time until the boy did; the Dib wasn't stupid. Zim had to grudgingly admit that, as the boy was his rival back in his old town, which was precisely the reason why he left. It had taken years for him to get to where he was today, spreading his influence around the skool and wrapping the humans around his finger. He couldn't afford to lose it, and the Dib could undo everything with his blundering ways.
Gritting his teeth, Zim kicked open the front doors of the skool and stomped down the steps. He couldn't concentrate on keeping up his mask with the new factor in his plan and he had to regroup. It wasn't like any of the authoritative human units cared what their students did, and they wouldn't dare go against Zim. He ran the skool with an iron fist and controlled everyone in it. The last human unit who had tried to protest had mysteriously disappeared. (He had used the stink beast for studying brain probes before disassembling it to see how the human body was made up.) No one questioned him after that.
Zim turned down another street, skirting around the stray puddles lying in the road on his way towards his apartment. Although he coated himself with glue daily to avoid getting burned by water, he still had an instinctual aversion to the liquid. Hopefully the Dib hadn't noticed that when he was drinking water at lunch. What was it about the boy that made him lose his carefully controlled emotions?
"It must be the stupidity coming off of him in waves," Zim muttered to himself as he pushed open the metal door to the entrance of his building. Water stains turned the ceiling into a muddy brown color and the carpet of the narrow hallway was threadbare and covered with a thick layer of grime. Zim couldn't repress the shudder that wracked his frame as a cockroach scuttled out of one of the many cracks in the wall to crawl under a warped door. He wished he had his can of disinfectant with him, but he had to leave it at home because it was something that normal humans didn't carry around. He did have a small bottle of hand sanitizer in his back pocket, which made him feel marginally better.
Walking towards the end of the unlit hallway past the rows of tightly closed doors, he made his way down the twisted stairs to the basement where he lived. It was smaller than most of the rooms in the three-story apartment but it was cheap, and that was all that mattered. As he was the only one living in the basement, he had been able to modify the room and add rooms for him to work in his labs miles underground.
A push of a button and the locks were undone and the door swung open where he was assaulted with a Poop Dog commercial blaring from the speakers of the TV. "Gir!" he yelled, kicking the door shut before toeing off his shoes to neatly place them against the wall, "I'm going to my labs."
"You're home!" the robot squealed, popping out of a pile of nachos sitting on the couch in front of the TV. He stuck a handful of chips in his mouth, holding up the plate towards his master. "I made these for you, I thought you were gonna have a bad day."
"How did you know that?" Zim asked suspiciously, trying not to gag at the nauseating smell of greasy cheese that had congealed into a solid mass on the plate. How he hated human food, especially cheese. It looked like the containment goo smeets were surrounded with before they were activated. It was sickening.
"Uh…I dunno!" the robot answered while shrugging his robotic shoulders before giggling at whatever had come on the television.
Zim 'hn'd' as he walked towards his small, but pristinely neat kitchen. There was a small refrigerator and a stove with a couple cupboards lined against one wall. Blue curtains hung against a bricked up window, and a picture of a bowl of fruit hung next to it. A small round table with a single chair sat in the middle of the tiled kitchen with grated cheese left messily on the top when Gir had made nachos.
Zim thought he had done a good job when designing floor plans for his new base, and if anyone were to enter his apartment then they would be none the wiser. Except for the lack of plates and other utensils in the cupboards and food in the refrigerator it looked like any other normal kitchen. Of course the trashcan set next to the counter was actually the lift to get to his labs.
"Gir, don't bother me," Zim ordered, tapping on the trashcan pedal to open the lid and stepping inside. "And if anyone with a big head knocks on the door, I want you to eliminate them." He wouldn't put it past the Dib to try and find out where he was. It was just the way the boy worked, and Zim didn't expect the human to change after all these years.
Dib was in the skool library during his senior privileges break, head bent over an old book on paranormal sciences. It was an outdated copy, but he had nothing else to do and he really didn't feel like going back to where he lived. It was a rather nice looking apartment his dad had bought him, and Dib would have enjoyed it more if he didn't know his dad only did it to get rid of him. Apparently having a son that was 'insane' didn't do well for the scientist's global image. That and, well, the whole 'gay' thing. Dib really hadn't meant for his dad to walk in on him with The Letter M.
"Such is my life," the boy sighed and closed the book as he tilted back his head to rest against the back of his chair. He closed his eyes, just taking in the quiet of the surprisingly extensive skool library, and as a result he didn't notice the people who had crept up next to him until a book was slammed down against the table.
"Wha-?" Dib exclaimed startled, nearly toppling over in his chair at the unexpected company. His hand automatically reached back towards his pant's pocket where he kept a stun disk that was roughly the size of a quarter. It was a weapon he had invented when he had been trying to unmask Zim. He hadn't been able to try it out before the alien disappeared, but the three kids looming over him might prove useful.
"What do you want?" Dib asked with a touch of annoyance, eyeing the teens that were standing on the other side of the table. Really, he hadn't done anything yet and already bullies were targeting him. Had Zim managed to place a beacon on him for people to ridicule him when he wasn't looking? This was ridiculous.
The tallest of the group, a skinny male wearing a black and red striped shirt and black pants answered. "We're here to warn you to stay away from him," the teen said lowly. "He doesn't take kindly to other people."
"So we're asking you nicely to leave him alone," the girl of the group piped up with kohl-lined eyes narrowed in a glare. Dib couldn't help but notice the girl was dressed a lot like his sister, except she was wearing a dark purple dress with black striped tights. The hair was almost the exact same shade of purple though, and Dib made a note to ask his dad if he had any other children Dib didn't know about. Maybe a clone…?
Dib pinched the bridge of his nose as he looked between the trio and wondering if it was a joke. They looked like the members of a Goth cult wearing entirely too much makeup and a weird striped themed pattern. "Whom are you talking about?"
"IZ," the third one responded, looking exactly like a stereotypical muscular bully with the exception of an emo haircut. Could Dib's life get any better?
"Is what?" Dib asked blankly, slightly annoyed as he picked up his books to leave. He didn't have time for such juvenile pranks. "If this is a 'let's pick on the new kid then'-"
"It's not," the first boy interrupted as he shot out a hand to bar Dib from leaving. "It's more like a welcoming committee to let you in on the rules."
"Sit," the girl commanded, pointing back down to the chair Dib was about to vacate. The sound of knuckles cracking echoed in the deserted library and Dib prudently decided to obey. This girl was almost as scary as his sister and it didn't help that she looked a lot like Gaz.
"As we were saying," the first boy began, lazily propping his hip against the table, "IZ is not a what, but a who. He's our skool President."
"You're asking me to stay away from some nerdy, smart kid?" Dib asked before he could check what he was saying. As a result, he was cuffed upside the head hard enough to see stars dancing at the edges of his vision.
"Hardly," the girl said dryly as she polished black lacquered nails against the front of her shirt. "He runs the skool and makes it a better place, and in return we make sure people don't bother him."
"He likes his privacy," the second male mentioned.
Dib scowled and rubbed his head, looking at the three teens that had surrounded him. "Look, I don't even know who you're talking about. I've just gotten here and I haven't met anyone yet."
"We know," the girl responded with a razor-edge smile. "Which is why this is just a warning, new kid."
"Don't sit with him at lunch again," the taller boy said, patting Dib lightly on the shoulder. "In fact, don't talk to him at all."
"Or you'll be hearing from us," the muscular boy concluded, sending a measured glare at the bewildered boy. "And next time it won't be a warning." There was an unseen motion before the group stood up and walked away, the girl in the lead with the two guys walking on either side of her.
Dib was left staring after the teens as they departed, mouth slightly open in shock as he tried to figure out what just happened. "IZ?" he murmured to himself, thinking about the quiet, violet eyed boy who ran the skool if the bodyguards were any indication of that.
His eyes scanned over a black poster taped to the side of a bookshelf with the words 'IZ' simply printed in crimson script. Just who exactly was this mysterious boy?