Chapter 12
Explosions really do stuff to your skin, I tell you. Shards of—I don't even know were all crumbled around me. And had gone through me. Don't ask me why...If wall could be sharp, then I guess it was. Or I don't know, maybe it was just it hitting me so fast it cut.
I had sort of "woken up", I guess. I don't think I'd passed out, exactly. It was kind of like sleeping with your eyes still open, except...I hadn't slept. Feeling a bit claustrophobic (yeah, so what if I was?) I tried pushing a couple shards of wall off of me. I started coughing and my eyes watered, and I decided to close them after that. My shirt was used as a handy mask for over my mouth and nose, and I continued pushing things off of me.
Finally able to sit up without major weight weighing me down, I called for GIR. I know I was really stupid doing it, but...God, that would suck really badly if he died. Again. But, my logical mind did argue that if you ate a bomb and it exploded...Well, sadly; I think you would be dead. So...right.
With GIR dead, I stopped my calling. Except...if he did that freaky thing where he was still alive in his eyes or something...Frick. I looked a little freaked out at the wreckage. If GIR jumped out of there any second now, I would scream sooo loud...
Zim!
I pulled my legs out and pushed myself up, the dust on the shards making it easier to use them for support. No slipping or sliding. I coughed again, putting my wrist to my shirt that was covering my face, to hold it there.
He's probably dead, too. God, this was even worse than the time GIR had made Zim eat water-waffles. Or when Zim had to come home from school sick one day because someone had started a food fight with Dib and Zim was laughing so hard a piece of actual human food got in his mouth and he started choking—AND that one time he almost drowned and burned to death. Well, maybe not as bad as the last one, but this not-knowing thing was scaring the shit out of me.
I looked around. Had I been blown a different direction? It didn't look like it, but then again nothing looked like it did before. I suppose I was screwed then. Lovely.
I took a quick glance to the floor. No GIR limbs or eyes or mouth or hands or whatever he had in his head. Good.
Oh! I knew what I was going to do!
"Computer?" I asked cautiously. Or had his entire base blown up? The walls were so badly damaged I could see dirt pouring in. Uh...maybe a box titled "Jerry", too. Was there going to be some half-dead zombie-hamster of doom after my ass or something?
The box was duct-taped, it looked like, so maybe the kid was as paranoid as I was. I wonder if Dib had had a hamster once.
"Yeaaah?" the Computer lazily replied.
"You're alive!" I felt so happy everything wasn't destroyed.
"...Actually...no..."
"Oh. Sorry."
"It's okay..."
"...Anyways, can you take me to Zim?"
"He won't like you coming back without the shleek..."
I sighed. He really wouldn't. Even if his base exploded, he still wanted whatever...the frick...a shleek was.
"Well, can you show me to it, please?"
"I can give some to you..."
"Oooh, gimme please." Now this was an interesting conversation.
The Computer didn't say anything, but a mechanical arm came out and dropped a...shleek in my arms. Turns out a shleek looks like one of those old-fashioned Coke glass bottles. Oh, wow. And it even had the word "shleek" written across it, strangely in the Coca-Cola font. Huh, weird...The liquid inside of it was clear and see-through looking. Shleek was very thin in texture, sort of like water, except it probably wasn't anything like water.
"What does this do exactly?"
"It will 'sober him' up, in your terms..."
"Oh...Has he used this before?" Yeah, that's me...checking to see if Zim is an alcoholic.
"No..."
"Cool," I idly replied, happy now. "Can you take me back to Zi—"
Ah, that friggin' computer. A platform I didn't even know was there opened up below me and I shot up. I practically dropped the shleek while it happened, but managed to do some weird dance of some sort to grab it. Heh, I got skills.
It stopped suddenly, and the shleek flew out of my hands. Awww...I didn't catch it and it clattered to the floor. It didn't break, though. Whoa, look at that! Must be some weird-ass Irken glass stuff. Maybe they found a way to blend plastic and glass or something. I bent over and grabbed it again, happy it didn't break.
Coming back up, I noticed...
This floor wasn't even touched by the explosion.
"Give to Zim," Zim said, and I jumped from the noise. He snatched the thing, looking quite happier now that he had it. He was still in the same place he was before; the computer had been nice enough to pop me up next to him.
"Oh, sorry," I replied, watching him as he bit into it. Uhh...The cap was still in his mouth, and he spit it into his palm. Then I watched him drink it. Holy mother of cheese, it had turned orange. Maybe oxygen exposure changed its color? Interesting...
"A bomb exploded a couple floors down." I had decided to just blurt it out, you see.
Zim spat dramatically. I happened to be standing in the way to get a good blast of it. Great, great, greeeaat. I had shleek all over me. Should I be burning? Hmm...Fizzling sounds were coming from me, so I believe that wasn't good. Maybe it was dissolving my clothes. Crap. I took a glance at Zim. He looked too busy freaking out to bother if my clothes were disappearing.
"What?"
I ignored him, watching the liquid drip from my clothes to the floor. Zim looked at my eyes in dumbfounded shock. He blinked. I blinked.
"COMPUTEEEEEEER!"
Zim didn't even have to say it before a spot opened up on the floor and took him down. I wasn't going to stand here, alone, for who knows how long before Zim would come back up. Knowing Zim, he probably would take days and then finally notice me. I, being the lucky one, would have probably starved to death by then. No, no, dehydration sounded more reasonable. Freaking Zim had a grudge against water, and that'd almost killed me the first week I'd gotten here. It had also taken me forever to get him to build a shower for me.
Anyway, the point is I asked the computer to take me down. I think the computer liked me...Or, at least, better than Zim. When the computer did stuff for me, it was more like favors for a friend than exasperated giving-in.
When I was going down, I saw a bunch of random rooms. Rooms that have held unspeakable things, things that GIR looked like he liked—and had messed up—and other random rooms. Of doom. I think one was actually full of live, squealing pigs. Mostly, though, the other rooms just looked very wirey indeed.
When I reached the floor, I immediately saw Zim. Freaking out.
"My base! MY BEAUTIFUL BAAASE!" Zim tugged on his antennae, running one place, then the next. He ran in a very zig-zaggy way, which made me stare. Zim stopped suddenly. "How could I not notice...? No alarms...? There must be some sort of bug...Computer!!!"
In the next few minutes, Zim gave commands to the computer, demanding the problem should be found. Zim had to be told thirteen times before he got it that the computer had actually noticed, not really cared, and hadn't told him about the bomb. Plus, the computer had known I was going to tell Zim about it.
"There's detectors for that! And if they malfunctioned, why didn't you notice the boooomb?" Zim asked.
"I did."
Zim's eyes got wide and his hands went to his antennae again. "Why did you not tell Zim?!"
"I was sleepin'..." The computer said this defensively.
"COMPUTERS DO NOT SLEEP! You lie!"
I laughed, and Zim either didn't notice or didn't care, because he didn't do anything.
Zim kicked something angrily and it broke. "Stupid! Dookie! Arggh smelly—pig—weasles—I—Zim—something!" Zim growled and crossed his arms. "GIR! Clean this up."
"Uhh," I said, seeing my time to interrupt, "GIR...kinda...ate the bomb."
Zim stared at me blankly.
I cleared my throat. Then he threw his hands up into the air.
"That horrible IGNORANT MALFUNCTIONING ROBOT...! WORTHLESS! Absolutely WORTHLESS! Heh. Well..." Zim mumbled something.
"Well, you sobered up pretty quick," I commented idly.
"The Dib-monkey better not find out about this," Zim muttered darkly, gazing at the room. "It would fill his GIANT HEAD of MONSTROSITY with the idea that Zim's base is IMPLODING on itself. But it is not!" Zim stuck a finger in the air defiantly.
"Do you have any idea who would have planted the bomb?"
Zim put a hand to his chin, thinking. "Hmmmm...No, not at all."
I was mentally naming off everyone who could've.
"Dib?"
"Ha!" Zim snorted. "Never. The Dib-thing wouldn't have access to that sort of technology. Let alone succeed to putting it my base. How would the worm have planted it?"
Crap. My thoughts had just drifted to the Tallest. Zim wouldn't like that idea at all...No matter how much he thought he's gotten over them. Or hated them. But still, I guessed I was just going to throw it out there.
"The...Tallest?"
Zim had been investigating the damage. He turned around and stared at me. God, he was doing that a lot today.
"I mean," I said quickly, "it probably isn't, but you know they have the technology. I saw the bomb though and it kinda looked...low-tech, so it probably wasn't them." I noted I used the word 'probably' twice in that sentence. A tiny voice in my head chimed in, though, saying, what if they wanted it to look low-tech so that you or Zim wouldn't think it was them? And, they can teleport things...They are paranoid about that whole breeding thing, too...
"I think..." Zim thought. "...I dunno. But Zim will find out who did this," Zim's eyes narrowed and shifted, as if he was making a threat to the air. Well...He was, I guess.
"Yeah," I sighed. "I want to find out, too..."
