Ch.7: Alliance
When Dib pulled up to his house, the place was as deserted as it had been when he left it-save for Gaz lounging primly on the porch, queen of the world, with the Gameslave on her lap.
Dib opened the door, sliding out and standing up warily. "Gaz? Are they gone?"
"Obviously," Anyone who didn't know Gaz as well as Dib did would have found her body language to be its usual indifference, but to Dib, the girl telegraphed smugness, even at this distance.
He sighed, shutting his door and turning to the backseat. "How'd you do it?"
Gaz actually looked up and smirked at that, though her brother couldn't see. "I told them President Woman called to tell Dad she was on her way to see him at the main lab. Idiots believed me."
Dib snorted, ducking in to pick up Zim. Of course they did. Gaz was Daddy's Little Girl. No insanity scares there. And a model citizen to boot, as far as they knew...
Nudging the backseat door shut, Dib walked quickly up to where Gaz sat, glancing warily behind him reflexively, though there was no sign of Scattermoon anywhere, nor of any form of pursuit at all, really. Far from calming him, it made him feel all the more paranoid and on edge...
"Gaz, could you get the door...?" he asked automatically as he reached her-his arms were starting to ache from all the putting down, picking up, and carrying around of the obnoxious green alien. Gaz gave him The Look-capitalized for its capacity to melt steel and annoying older brothers. "...or not..." He could manage easily enough on his own. Zim wasn't all that heavy. Gaz pointedly followed after him, though...
"Why didn't you just let the other alien have him?" she asked doubtfully, jerking a thumb at his burden.
"Gaz, you know what his PAK is capable of. Do you know what an alien like Scattermoon could do with that kind of technology?"
"Do you know what Dad could do with that kind of technology?" Gaz countered. Dib faltered on the steps for a minute, but quickly recovered, turning deliberately to face his sister.
"I do, Gaz," he said slowly. "Which is why you and Dad have to go on Campalooza without me."
Campalooza, a direct result of their father reading far too many parenting studies, was whatever month he or Gaz (usually Gaz) chose, their father would drop everything and take them camping, just the three of them, for a whole month. Of course, being Professor Membrane, the 'camping' was done in the most high tech way possible-with wifi and everything.
Gaz looked at him as if he had really gone around the bend this time. "Campalooza? It's the middle of the skool year!"
"I know, Gaz, but Scattermoon is extremely dangerous, and you know that Dad'll just blow me off if I try to warn him. He'll probably call it a 'psychotic relapse' or something. And since when have you cared at all about skool, anyway?"
He had her there. Any time in which she wasn't allowed to play her Gameslave was time wasted, as far as she was concerned. And at Campalooza she could play it all she wanted...AND have their father all to herself...
"Fine." she growled, turning and stomping her way back downstairs. Dib continued back up to his room. At the doorway he paused, looking down at the sleeping alien in his arms, so oddly innocent-looking. Coming to a decision, he ignored the nest and cord, placing the alien instead on his back in Dib's own bed (after clearing all the junk off, of course). He dug into the left-hand bottom drawer of his desk for the key to the cuffs.
When he found it, he stared down at it in his palm for a long second. "Wow, I really am crazy," he mumbled to himself, dazed.
Quickly, before common sense could voice its (very negative) opinion inside his head, he unlocked the cuffs and took them off the small green wrists. Their owner remained unconscious, and would stay that way for a while, thanks to the thumbtack sedative. Just as well; Dib needed time to set up another, vital part of his plan...
...
Waking up for Zim was...odd, to say the least. Like falling upward, into the most delicious-smelling cloud...A small, smeety squeak came out of him as he gathered as much of it as he could to himself, nuzzling his face happily into it.
As more awareness of his surroundings slowly came back to him, he realized what he was clutching so tightly wasn't a cloud but sheets. And that the delicious smell was familiar...very familiar...He pressed his head further in, doing the Irken version of inhaling deeply with his antennae. Hm. Zim's sheets didn't smell this good. Zim's sheets smelled like sanitizing chemicals and mothballs. Then whose-?
Zim's eyes snapped open, and he scrambled backward with a muffled shriek. He clung to the wall, alien heart pounding. The Dib's sheets! He had been cuddling THE DIB'S sheets! UGH! Zim shuddered, hugging himself tightly, feeling the sudden, desperate need for a chemical bath-
Wait. His arms were free? He looked down, pulling them away from his body. No cuffs. No hyuuman restrictions of any kind. Although, one of his sleeves was rolled up to his elbow. Half curious, half suspicious, Zim turned that arm over.
A small yellow smiley face bandage covered the puncture wound the Dib's filthy device had made in his arm. Zim's eyes narrowed in a glare at it. Stupid inferior hyuuman...sticky thing. He callously ripped it off.
His yelp rang loudly through the room. "Gah! Curse youuuu!" he snarled, throwing the thing down and giving it the most hateful glare he could manage.
Quickly, though, he was distracted from his new enemy by a sound. His antennae perked immediately to attention. Movement. Downstairs. Ruby eyes narrowed. Dib-stink.
Zim leaped off the bed-but his body wasn't quite ready for it, so instead of landing smoothly on his feet, the alien's knees buckled on impact, pitching him forward. With a very uninvaderly squawk, Zim managed to catch himself with his hands.
Hissing angrily at his uncooperative body, Zim planted his feet again, pulling his noodly legs gingerly forward and pushing up with his hands, until he was more or less crouching, his full weight back on his legs. When they didn't give out from under him again, he carefully rose to his full height.
Punching the air in victory, Zim made his way to the door, his legs feeling stronger and steadier underneath him with each step.
When he reached the door, his victory smirk disappeared, and he eyed the primitive portal device suspiciously. After a wary second, he tried the doorknob, which was...unlocked. Zim pushed it open, continuing out into the hallway beyond.
The sound of movement downstairs had stopped, but Zim did not. He continued, moving carefully, slowly, antennae pricked and listening, through the short hall and down the stairs. At the bottom, he picked up a fresh trail of Dib-scent. Kitchen. He turned immediately to the right, peeking around the corner when he reached it.
There he was, his coatless back to Zim, fiddling with something on the kitchen table. When he turned away from it, Zim struck, running at full pelt and leaping into a smooth tackle, hitting the clueless Dib dead on, knocking the larger, thin human to the ground with a loud, satisfying thump.
Zim immediately pinned his arms, planting himself firmly on the hyuuman's lower back so he couldn't be bucked off. A victorious cackle burst out of Zim's throat. Who's the helpless one NOW, Dib-stink?
"Hello Zim." The trapped hyuuman's voice was infuriatingly calm, his body slack in Zim's hold. Angrily Zim's clawed fingers dug into pale wrists, attempting to goad a reaction out of him. When that didn't work he leaned forward, putting his mouth right next to Dib's ear.
"What's to stop me from killing you right now, Dib filth?" he hissed viciously into the tiny, inferior hearing receptor.
"Well, first of all," the boy began in a bored voice. "if you were able to use your PAK legs, you would have done it already."
"Zim can!" Zim snapped back, willing the spidery PAK legs to appear with all his might. Whirr. Click. Nothing, except the same message as before. He growled, digging a knee hard into the vulnerable human's back, feeling a sweet jolt of vindictive pleasure when he hissed quietly in pain at last. Serves him right for trying to prove ZIM wrong!
"Second of all," Dib continued, bored voice slightly pained now. "I need you, Zim, and you need me."
Zim blinked in surprise, then narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "How do you figure that, Dib-stupid?"
"Scattermoon," Dib's voice dripped with loathing on his former leader's name. "She's dangerous, powerful, and smart. She wants you, and that make her your problem too. I know more about her than you do, but to have a chance at exposing her I'll need superior technology she won't be familiar with. Your technology, Zim."
Zim considered the information for a minute, his grip letting up just a bit. "And what if Zim decides he doesn't need your filthy help?"
Dib shrugged, shoulders lifting off the floor slightly. "Can't exactly stop you, can I?"
"Of course you can't, inferior Earth-stink." Zim purred, happy now that he had been reminded of his superiority over the Earth monkey. To prove it he pushed off the boy, swaggering toward the kitchen's back door...
Zim had barely opened it, when a loud screeching noise sounded, and something that felt like an electric shock went through the hand on the doorknob. Zim yelped, letting go of the doorknob and kicking the door shut with his foot. The noise instantly ceased, and in the ringing silence, a noise that sounded suspiciously like metal sliding over various exit points in the house could be heard.
Zim turned to stare at Dib, who stared back innocently from where he now sat on his knees. "What? I did say that I couldn't stop you..."
In that second, Zim could have happily choked the life from the insolent worm baby right then and there, with his bare hands. But then he remembered his old plan, and a reply much more devious and deliciously evil occured to him...
Instead of a glare, he graced the human with a smile. "Why Dib-stink, if you wanted to spend more time with the amazing Zim, all you had to do was ask him."
The face Dib made at that was priceless. Zim had to bite the inside of his cheek to hold in a victorious cackle as the previously smug hyuuman was suddenly stammering.
"W-wh-what? NO! That's not it AT ALL! Zim!"
Zim smirked, swaggering right past the stunned human.
"Shut up, Dib-stutter. Zim is tired. He will hear your pathetic Dib-whining tomorrow." And with that Zim marched right back up the stairs to reclaim Dib's bed, leaving the boy to stare after him, flabbergasted.
A/N: Woohoo! Ch.7! A funnier chapter, I think. Story was getting a bit angsty serious. Can't have that! :).
Ooh Dib. Saying he needed Zim first. A veiled confession, perhaps? Anyway, usual disclaimer: I own nothing! It all belongs to Jhonen Vasquez.
