The Change
Summary: the world is wicked, the world is cruel. No one knows this better than humanity's emotional sewer system, Johnny C. But floods are a thing of the past, and the world is spiraling out of control. It seems like maybe, this time, the lights have gone out for good.
Story: a crossover of Johnny the Homicidal maniac, Dies the Fire, Invader Zim, and misc. names and places. In which the old world ends, and a new world begins.
Leading characters: Johnny C., Devi D, Todd 'Squee' Castil, and the Zim and Dib duo.
Warnings: Murder, language, references to cannabalism, and of course Johnny C. himself.
11th-
"Don't loosen your grip on those things!" shouted Johnny, gesturing wildly with his signature, smiley-face handled dagger. "Fuck, pestilence ridden red-teeth could keep a better grip on those things."
Disgusted, he tossed his knife in a random direction, missing a woman by mere inches judging from the shriek. He slunk to the same shady corner where Devi rested, viewing her troupe's progress. No practice for her, until her wrist healed from yesterday's strain.
"You're comparing them to cannibals now?" She asked with a small grin, unusually relaxed.
Out on the field, Pam was struggling to lift her sword, sweating profusely in the spring heat. As soon as she got it into the air, a breeze would flutter by and knock her to the ground.
"Well, maybe that's not fair. Cannibals have some descent nerve." Johnny took a seat beside his comrade. "Your crew couldn't scare a pair of bunny slippers off Squee's feet."
True as that was, he couldn't help but be proud of them. They might not have the fearsomeness of experienced killers, but they put their all into the training. They worked for it. And at this point, a voice in Johnny's mind was asking him if, in the end, he really wanted them to become killers at all…
"Not my fault," Devi replied, dragging him back to the present, "If anyone's to blame for that, it's you. After all, who's been training them for weeks now?"
The murderer looked at her carefully. "You're in an awfully good mood today."
Immediately, the blue-haired woman tensed, hand twitching toward the small kitchen knife she now kept in her boot at all times. Oh, why did he have to say that?
"It's a nice day out, Johnny," she replied, "I have no work and there was bread for breakfast this morning. I'm allowed to enjoy my down time."
It was funny. Half of the people in the house called him 'Nny', none of whom had he given permission to, and the one person he wouldn't have minded it from refused to call him anything but Johnny. He remembered the way she used to say it, before things went sour, and the smile on her lips when she said it, the spreading of her lips that dissipated the sound into a happy breath.
"Devi, you're so defensive. I mean, you're always freaking out on me for the smallest things…"
"Ugh, I can't believe you don't get this."
Devi grabbed him by the arm and dragged him around the side of the house, away from prying eyes. Posture spelled, "gearing up for a tirade". He looked away and realized that she was still muttering.
"…I knew you were clueless, but fuck." She groaned, looking ready to punch someone. "Johnny, you tried to kill me a year ago. Kill! That may not seem like a big deal to you, but to me it's not just an insult, it's a constant, draining problem! How do I know that you won't snap again? How do I know that you aren't just biding your time until the next attack?"
The maniac stared at her. "Devi, I would never do that—"
"How do I know? Why should I trust you for anything at all? Clearly, you don't even stop for the people you care about. I mean, you and me, and you… God. You're an ass, you know that?"
"I never—"
"What? You never did anything? What world are you living in? How do you expect me to forget the shit you put me through, all the months I spent hiding in my apartment? I can't, Johnny, No matter what you've done for my friends… or for me," she finished, looking suddenly very tired and pained.
She looked up at the clear blue sky, breathing deeply. In the next minute, Johnny tried something totally foreign to him—he put himself in someone else's shoes.
'Suppose', he instructed himself, 'you were a woman. A woman with really bad taste in men. You meet a guy that you really like, and he seems to like you too. You go on a date. Everything is perfect. Then, for reasons you know nothing of, he pulls out a knife and tries to kill you.'
He ran through the night in fast-forward with a point of view shift, and a grasp of the experience eventually formed. He winced. It looked… different from her side of things.
"But Devi! You have to understand, at the time, I thought I was being… um... romantic."
The woman gaped at him.
"Nothing about stabbing me repeatedly with a knife struck me as particularly romantic!"
"Well," Johnny admitted, "it does seem pretty silly now, but I wasn't thinking straight at the time."
"Silly," she repeated, looking incredulous. "It was a bit more than silly. In fact, it was like a nightmare world from which there is no waking."
"Okay. It was bad. But in my defense, I was certifiably insane at the time."
"Oh, and you aren't now?"
"No, I don't think so. It's very difficult to tell, but I'm pretty sure. You just have to… trust me."
"Trust you! Why should I trust you?"
Johnny said nothing for a long time, trying to think of a good reason. He looked up at the sky again, as if it might hold all the answers he searched for. What did he have to give her?
"Because," he finally said, "I never stopped caring about you. And because of all I've done for you and your friends there. I hate people, and here I'm living in a house with a dozen of them. This is hard for me. I'm trying, can't you see that? I'm trying to change, to get better. Not just for my sake, but for you too."
Silence again. Something twisted in Johnny's chest, and he was sure that Devi was going to punch him… and he wondered if maybe he deserved that. It had been a long time since he last wondered such a thing.
"Fine," Devi sighed. "Fine. I'll try. For their sakes."
Johnny grinned. At that moment, he could have walked through Café Le Prick wearing a 'Tobacco-Free' t-shirt without dismembering a single person.
Oh yes, he was happy. Very happy.
--
Zim paced the floor of his room, conveniently shared with Dib, muttering to himself in a hissing language. His roommate sat in the corner, wearily observing.
"Zim, could you at least try to be rational?" the dark haired boy asked, exasperated.
"Zim IS INCREDIBLY RATIONAL!" the green boy screeched.
"Yes. Because screaming at me for giving you advice is completely understandable."
Zim simmered, pacing even more furiously. Dib thought that it wouldn't be long before he wore a groove into the concrete, and maybe he could use it for hatching ghost worms—wait, that wasn't relevant. And everybody knew that ghost worms needed electric voltage to form cocoons! Silly.
"Night and day," the noseless boy muttered, "I'm surrounded by earth-smellies. I can't take off the wig, can't take out the contacts—OH HOW THEY ITCH! And I can't contact the armada. This is like HELL."
Dib was thoughtful. "They already know that you look weird… why not just take the contacts out?"
"BAH! And have you telling everyone that I'm an alien? Again? No, no, there is no relief for Zim."
"Look," Dib started, uncomfortable with the situation, "if I swear not to start up the alien thing, will you take out the contacts and leave them out?"
The foreigner stopped dead, turning to stare at Dib. His companion shrugged nervously, attempting to look trustworthy.
"Why would you do that?"
"I… well, none of your technology works, except the stuff in your PAK, and you can't contact the mother ship… it just seems mean to leave you like this. We're kind of friends, right?"
"You," Zim pointed out, "are a filthy Earthenoid. And I am a proud Irken invader. You've been trying to turn me in to the authorities since I got here, and Zim has been trying to kill you with rabid gerbils. DOES THAT SOUND LIKE FRIENDSHIP TO YOU?"
Dib blinked. "Well, we are."
The alien resumed his pacing. "What guarantee is there that you will not go back on your word, Dib-thing?"
"The fact that we're friends, I have nothing to gain, and that living in close quarters like this, you could very easily kill me in my sleep."
Hmm. Now, why had that thought only just occurred to Dib? They'd been here for days, sleeping in the same room.
"Well, Zim is mightily superior to your race in every way… even with my technology rendered useless by the white Blast… Very well! A handshake, then?"
The human boy grinned. Hey, why not work this to everyone's advantage?
"Alright. So the deal is: you never worry about contacts again, I stop telling people that you're an alien, and you use what technology you still have to help the troupe."
"Eh? This was not mentioned before."
"Look, do you want to do this or not? It'll benefit you too, in the long run."
"Whatever."
So they shook on it, and headed for the door.
On ground level they passed Nny, who blinked at them as if they were both aliens. A quick question told them that Devi was out back, trying to convince some interested parties that an ostrich herd was a bad idea.
Outside, it was sunny, blue day, what was once perfect for fishing or hiking, or any of the things Dib never actually did but had heard about. Boy, he'd been a deprived child—having a famous father could do that to you, he supposed. It might have been nice to go camping once or twice, though, instead of getting an MP3 or a new laptop… he could have looked for Bigfeet…
Zim elbowed him out his revere.
"Devi-human," the green boy started, "I have come to you with a proposition."
Dib looked sideways at him. Where was he going with that?
"The female with the large star on her face might have mentioned that I am… er… not normal," Zim continued, and Dib could see how much it was hurting him to actually admit that. "Did she tell you why?"
The blue-haired woman shook her head.
"Zim's parents were Russian scientists. GLORIOUS SCIENTISTS. They performed many experiments on me… painful ones, I'm sure. The result of these hideously painful experiments is that I do not look like a typical Earthinoid. Green skin, no nose, no ears… and Zim is abnormal in another way, as well."
The alien shot Dib a warning glance, then popped out his contacts lenses. Underneath those were brilliant red-pink orbs, almost liquid in appearance, which contained no discernible pupil.
"Pretty neat, huh? I'm also bald." He slid his wig back to expose a slightly elongated skull and two of what looked like antennae.
Devi's expression was unreadable. "Your parents," she said slowly, "were they trying to make a little green man from mars or something?"
Oh! Dib had an idea, and it was time to make good on that promise.
"Actually, Miss D, they were. See, they started the experiment before the Soviet Union dissolved, and they'd heard about how worked up Americans got over Roswell, so they started building an alien to use against us. Zim here was the prototype, but the government dissolved before they could make more, and you know, Cold War's over…"
The lady only said, "oh."
"And also," Zim took over, looking kind of excited, "in order for the invasion to go smoothly, they developed new technology that served the dual purpose of making Invaders highly advanced—SO ADVANCED—and creating assured destruction in America-land."
"But you know," Dib added, "developing all that technology is expensive, and there were all kinds of scarcity problems in Russia already—"
"So my parents could only make one of Zim, with the bare minimum of expense. But they built THIS!" Zim pointed to the metal pack on his back. "Which is basically a metal brain! The electrical impulses are of the same caliber as a human grey matter, and it stores most of Zim's VAST intelligence as well as his gadgets."
"So," the human finished, "the PAK was never shut down by The Change! At least, that's what we think. And if you'll talk to everyone and convince them not to throw stones at Zim when he takes the contacts out, then he can use whatever's left of the technology to help the Troupe."
Silence. Dib was suddenly aware of the crunchy grass and the vibrant sun, and Devi standing in front of him with that same unreadable expression on her face. He hadn't noticed, but for a few minutes, he'd spun off into another little world made of just him and Zim. Spooky.
"What you're saying is," Devi mused, eyeing the boys, "that you'll give me the only working machines in the entire city, and possibly the world, if I just explain to everyone that you aren't the creature from the Russian Lagoon?"
The two boys nodded.
"Well!" She grinned suddenly, "It sounds like I'm getting the better end of the deal, for once. I'll call a meeting tonight, and we'll explain the situation to everyone—preferably without you two pulling a twin routine every other sentence. The others will probably want you to swear loyalty to the Troupe…"
Devi made a face like she wouldn't have suggested such a thing herself.
"You know, we really ought to think of a name for the group," Dib said. "Like, the Fighting Badgers, or Hearts of Space…"
"Dib," the older lady snorted, "those sound like band names. And you can't just think up a title like that, it has to develop on its own. But any way, we'll need an oath of allegiance."
The idea seemed to make Zim very uncomfortable. Well, he was insanely loyal to his leaders back home…
"Ma'am, Zim has some really binding prior commitments… you know, to people in Russia. I don't think he can break those."
The alien looked grateful, in his own Zimmish way.
"Hmm…" Devi's smile was replaced with a thoughtful look, "Well, those people might as well be Galaxies away, with things being as they are. You'll probably never so much as hear from them again. But, if it's really that important… how about a secondary oath? Do you see what I'm getting at?"
A grin broke out on Zim's face, exposing zippered teeth. "Completely, my Tallest. Until the Armada contacts me, or until your regimen comes into conflict with my true-born people's, Zim swears to follow you as a he would a true Tallest."
That sounded familiar… Tallest… oh, wow. Dib met his Tallests once or twice over a communicator telescreen, and he knew how devoted Zim was to them. Devi would have no idea how meaningful that was…
"Tallest?" she asked, glancing at Dib for a translation.
"It's a title," he filled in, "think 'highest'. It's, um, a little different in Russian. But that's the best conversion."
"Ah. Then, I'm honored. What do you say we call that meeting now?"
She gestured in the direction of Johnny's house, and they fell into step behind her. It was nice to have someone calling the shots, especially someone confident and smart like Devi. Dib had never had a mother, but he figured that if he could pick one, Devi would be his first choice.
"You know what?" she mused, hands behind her back, "Your parents went about it all wrong. I mean, what are the chances of extraterrestrial life so closely resembling Homo Sapiens? Only an idiot would make you look so much like a human. It's just illogical."
Dib and Zim shared a look.
"Yeah… who'd believe that?"
-
TBC