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Author's Note:
Invader Zim is -c- Jhonen Vasquez! Only the events of this story, characters specific to the story, and character tweaking (heh) are mine. :3
~Jizena~
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Dib's Records
I've been chasing ghosts since I was a little kid. Vampires. Aliens. (Hahaha.) Chupacabras, yetis, sentient ooze, mutant hamsters, you name it. I'm the son of an Irken Tallest. But the single most surreal event of my life was fighting side by side with my own father. Figure that one out. I honest to God (or whatever) cannot think of anything stranger, especially any time prior to the day of that particular attempted Invasion.
And not only was Dad fighting right beside me... the guy was good. And I mean practiced. After seeing what Victor Haynsworth and Ira Murasaki could do, as well as Charlotte, Cthulhu and the others from the early days of the Organization, it probably shouldn't have come as much of a surprise, but that was probably how others who, oh, weren't Professor Membrane's offspring were feeling. I actually got caught and almost seriously wounded a couple of times just from having to stop and gawk at whatever Dad was currently doing. I'd never known why the hell he'd needed those electrically-charged gloves. He could have just flipped a stupid light switch or plugged something in, I'd always thought; he didn't need gloves that sparked a current. Then again, a lot of Dad's inventions seemed kind of weird or out of place... but knowing that he'd been inspired by Irken technology for a lot of them, well, that naturally changed some things in my perceptions.
Dad had always been this odd, crazy enigma. Just this... image, more even than a person. This intangible thing, this concept, this suggestion of a human being that I just happened to be related to. Professor Membrane was someone who had technically been raising me, but behind the lab coat and goggles was someone who wanted to be a father. He just never was, never tried, never succeeded. Oh, Membrane was a very successful man. Just not at home. Never at home. He had lost himself.
But for the first time ever, I felt like I was finally getting a glance at who he really was. Who my dad had been until over a decade ago. The man once called Charles Mansfield, who had just had a dream with a group of like-minded people to educate the world on the supernatural and paranormal, to fund studies of the unexplained. I wanted to meet that man. I wanted to meet him and call him my father. There was just the issue of attempting to forgive him first. He was well on his way on that battlefield, but there were still a lot of words I needed to hear before I could be satisfied. (Words in the form of eleven years' worth of an apology, for example.)
Damn, though. Who knew the guy had it in him to be such a great fighter? I knew his goggles were equipped with target locks, and man, they worked. I'd see them flash here and there, and he'd turn his head or tick his hand around behind him, blasting out in whichever direction his primary target was, while still knowing exactly where to strike next. No wonder he'd always let Gaz play her video games.
Even factoring in how impressive a lot of his attacks were, there seemed to be something erratic about the way Dad fought. Like there was still something missing. I figured that had something to do with the fact that he was probably highly out of practice in doing such things, but the more he started to read off of the movements, the more we started to blend our skills together, the more fluid and precise his actions became. Huh. Who knew? Professor Membrane, the man who'd always worked alone and insisted upon a preference for it, worked much better with a partner. Meaning I could only imagine what kinds of things he and Miyuki must have tried to do—how much had they fought together? Well, now was no time to wonder, but it would be in the back of my mind for a while.
The damn Irkens just kept on coming. I hadn't come across Skutch or Skoodge yet, and had no idea where Tak herself had disappeared to, but her army was enormous. This was all some kind of ridiculous cat-and-mouse game; I knew it. She'd keep sending her army at me, just to wear me out or get me angry. I was still shaking a little, simply knowing that Tak had had the means to call that PAK out of me. The influence it had had on me was gone, I couldn't feel it whirring or trying to reattach to my brain, but the fact was, it was there. An extra little piece of my own DNA. Latent genes. When I was born, so had that thing been, right inside me. Disgusting to think about, but the truth was there. And it was the source of those blasts I was able to use, and that I used liberally. It served as a reminder of something else, though: for once in my life, I wanted to stick around my father because I knew that he'd defend me. He knew how to cut off the influence, how to keep my mind human. So, from the moment he'd turned up, I hadn't broken from fighting beside him for a second.
But, man, enough was enough. There were almost too many soldiers in Tak's army, all of them with much higher stamina than humans. My complex had no trenches, no strongholds other than buildings. Red had insisted that hand-to-hand, direct combat was best against the Irkens, so that had been part of Zim's defensive strategy that he passed along to our own army, but still. Two against God-knows-how-many was getting kind of rough.
Just as Dad and I were both catching our breath from a long, persistent wave of Elites, I heard more movement behind us. I lifted my head and turned, grabbing out my sword, but another well-formed blade hit the target before I could, and with much better accuracy. I couldn't help but grin. Ira really never held back. He gracefully withdrew his sword from the Irken he'd just cut through the PAK, blocked another behind him with his sheath, then spun to cut the other down, all in an almost poetic span of two breaths. He ticked his head up and grinned, then, sheathing the thin katana, he ducked, and over his back, coming from the spot I'd earlier been facing, sailed a small black arrow, which shot down yet another soldier.
"Thanks," I said as Ira, satisfied that the threats were, for now, gone, began walking toward me.
"Sure thing," he answered.
"...Ira...?"
At that point, I noticed that my father had turned as well. His still stance was the closest I knew I'd get to actually reading his expression: his back had gone completely rigid hands loose at his sides, head very slightly ticked back in what had to have been both shock and doubt. Victor—the one I could thank for that last arrow—approached me on the side while Dad still stood in awe of seeing Ira, and, clicking on the safety of his crossbow, began to say, "Seems that particular wave's nothing more to worry a—Charles?" he interrupted himself.
A split second later, Ira took an alarmed step back, staring up almost half a foot at my father, and yelped, "Oh, my God, you are."
"Ira?" Dad repeated, one hand twitching to start him moving again. "What happened to your voice?"
"What happened to—" started to retaliate. He winced, touched a hand to his throat, then shook his head and started over, "What happened to you?"
"Charles, you fucking idiot," Victor said, storming up to my father and punching his shoulder so he'd be facing him. Dad did turn, and I saw then one of the biggest and worst looks of scrutiny I had ever seen anyone give, let alone Victor, who never seemed to criticize people, especially that harshly. "What are you doing here?"
Dad's stance changed again as he shirked back; he glanced from Victor down to Ira, and the light of his goggles dimmed. For a moment, my heart skipped with the anticipation that he might finally take the damn things off. No such luck... not yet, anyway. But one thing was odd enough about the situation. I'd been hearing so much from Victor, and from Ira, about my father, and how the three of them were, before I was born, even up until the year Gaz turned three. Eleven years is a long time to be apart.
"I'm... helping," Dad answered Victor with some difficulty.
"Are you?" my godfather scoffed. "Now that's interesting. Had to let it fester long enough for it to seem like your own idea?"
"No, I'm... I'm here because of—well, a lot of things. What you said factors in there."
"What, the fact that something more important than your false media exploits had started up?" said Victor, baiting my dad.
Dad nodded. "That, yes. The 'fuck you' helped some, too."
"Glorious. Because it didn't throughout the nineties."
"Okay, woah, woah, woah," Ira cut in. "Pleasure to see you again, good to know you two haven't been all that distant, blah, blah, all that. I'm still... no, really, Charles: what the hell?"
"It's the coat, isn't it?" Dad guessed.
"No, it's those stupid goggles!" Ira shouted up at him. "They were stupid in 1985 and they're stupid now!"
"I can see in the dark—"
"IT'S THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON."
"Target lock."
"Still stupid. Also your hair."
"Fine," Dad relented. "At least I don't wear ribbons."
"You're just jealous," Ira smirked, tightening the ribbon that tied back his hair.
"God, you did clean up," Victor muttered. "Didn't you?"
My father glanced over at me (I'm sure I was gawking pretty impressively at that point... I mean, this was foreign as hell to me, just so much as seeing my dad socialize with anyone who wasn't an image on a floating television monitor; Dad had always seemed to hate people); to the other two, Dad then nodded. "Cleaner than I have been in a long time," he said on almost a whisper.
"Times and people change," Victor said sullenly. "That's what you told me. Still believe that rot?"
"Yes," said my father. His tone was almost alarmingly calm. "Change, and change again."
"It's the only constant in life," Ira shrugged.
"No kidding," Dad sighed.
"Uh, Dad...? Guys...?" I tried to catch their attention. As they'd been reuniting, I noticed a new wave of twenty-four heading our way, half in human guise, while the un-hologramed half marched in front. The three stopped talking and followed my gaze forward. Each and every soldier, dressed in a distressed green uniform, carried a gun of some sort. Some looked like long-barrelled rifles, others were of a pistol-type, still others were incomparable to anything on Earth, and extended the length of any one soldier's forearm. All of them, I could already tell, were laser-powered.
The uniforms the soldiers wore included armor on the shoulders, forearms, and lower legs, but nothing in the middle. Whoever the hell decided that was a good idea was pretty stupid; probably an Irken rather than a Vortian—vanity before functionality, ugh. Plus, all of their PAKs were exposed. You would think that someone would have given then PAK armor. You would think.
Which suddenly led me to believe that a vast majority of Tak's army were suicide squads. Not a single one of them would mind dying for her Empire, and she was proving that by waving them in our faces, just to boast about her numbers. She did not care about casualty. ...Or, there was the possibility that she did; she was just that confident that they'd win over us. That seemed more likely, as I thought about it. Tak was just that damn confident that none of her soldiers would bite it on my Corporation grounds.
Ira took one look at the oncoming battalion and laughed. "A firing squad?" he said.
"What?" Dad wondered.
"She sent a firing squad!" Ira grinned. "That's so stupid. Then again: Irkens, what can you do?" He cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted out to the firing squad: "You hear me, idiots? You'd better have a really good plan!"
"Ira, what are you doing?" I yelped at him.
"Oh, wait... oh, darn it!" he then said, his sharp purple eyes widening for a second. He whipped around to look up specifically at me and Victor, then said, "Sorry, I got distracted and completely forgot. Tak sent out another assignment. This really is just to distract us. Crap. Dib, you'd better move."
"What?" I wondered. "Why?"
"Invader Skoodge," Ira warned me. My heart leapt, and my back burned... not from any PAK influence, but rather intentionally from my Meekrob tattoo. I'd kill him. This time, no matter how long it took, I would kill Invader Skoodge. "Tak sent him on another mission. Red's got Tak fighting alone right now—" oh, that couldn't end well— "but she sent Skoodge after Lex."
"WHAT?" Victor and I both roared at once.
The firing squad began their advance, surrounding us on all sides. "For God's sake," Victor muttered. "We've got to fight our way out, then?"
"You two make a run for it," my Dad instructed. I saw Victor blanche, and I was really getting ready to just plain surge step my way right over to my girlfriend... but then remembered that had been the fatal mistake last time. I relented and took up my sword. No waste of abilities. I wasn't going to run out of energy while Skoodge targeted Lex. I was going to kill him, and she wasn't going to incur a single scratch. That's just the way things had to be. "Ira, I trust we'll catch up later, but for now, I guess—"
"You got anything besides those gloves?" Ira wondered. The four of us closed in, until we were all back to back. Victor unlocked the safety of his crossbow and reloaded. My hands tightened around the hilt of my weapon. Only Ira's eyes moved. My back was pressed mostly to my father's, so I couldn't see what he was doing, but I heard him flex the material of his gloves.
"I've got all I need," was his answer.
"On three, the old formation?" Victor guessed.
"God, we all still remember that?" my father almost laughed.
"It's an easy one to remember, Charles; we did have our slightly unimaginative moments."
"I'm the runner?" said Ira.
"Always." Victor grinned, and collected his weapon as he glanced around for proper aim.
"You have far too much faith in me, Victor Haynsworth."
"Only because you always succeed."
"I appreciate that."
The first shot was fired, and my father yelled, "DOWN! AND GO!"
The laser shot, coming from in front of my father, continued its course over us, and shot down the soldier who'd been in front of me. The other Irkens flocked to create more of a wall in the direction Victor and I had to run, so Dad sent out two blasts from his gloves to the space behind me, then stood so that he and Victor were precisely on either side of me. I held my sword horizontally, so that one of the sharp ends of the blade was pointed out, and Ira crouched, preparing to run. "Firing," Victor warned.
Dad and my godfather opened fire; Victor with a well-targeted volley of arrows, and my father with several static bolts from his charged gloves. They started, I noticed, on the outsides of the Irken formation and were working their way in. Ira took the center. Before I could even figure out what they were doing, he rushed forward at an Irken in a hologram only about an inch taller than Ira himself was; one of the riflemen.
Ira shoved his sword down the barrel of the rifle, then wrapped his left arm around the shooter's right, yanked him forward, and cracked the rifleman's ribs over his right knee by yanking down. He dislodged his sword, spun the hologramed Irken around, breaking the soldier's arm in the process, grabbed hold of the gun on either end only to bring it up and crack the Irken's head back with a blow to the chin from the gun's metal chassis. Letting go of the gun, then, he kicked the Elite down to the ground and shoved his katana down through the PAK.
He then ducked as Victor shot an arrow and Dad shot a bolt at two others in hologram standing directly over Ira with their Irken pistols at the ready, while Ira crouched and swept out to take down another three that were fighting as normal, with no added guises. From there, he stood in time to grab the one my father had shot—he'd only grazed the soldier's arm—and flip him over his head. Ira then kicked the solider onto his back and, yet again, went for the PAK.
"Path's clear!" he shouted. "Go!"
I nodded to Victor, who set his crossbow into place on his back as I sheathed my sword, and the two of us broke into a run. "Thanks!" I called back at Ira and my father.
"Catch up with us when you can!" Victor added.
"Unless these stupid things keep distracting us," said Ira, "we'll be right there. With any luck, Gaz has already reached Lex with the news!"
We didn't pay attention to anything around us. Both my godfather and I had only one thing we needed to do. He knew exactly where his daughter had been fighting, so we booked it in that direction. Every several feet or so, we'd have to dodge an attack, but I had enough faith in my own army to know that we didn't need to make any stops. Just as I started to think that this would be a wordless journey, Victor asked, "What got into your father?"
"Believe me," I replied, "I'd love to know."
"God, will anyone ever understand that man?"
"I have no idea, but he saved me, so there's that."
"Well, good for him. That ass."
I almost grinned before I remembered the dire situation. "I'm glad Dad's friends respect him so much," I did have to comment. Victor did show a little tick of a smirk, but we continued on with nothing further to say after that. I could only imagine the kind of clipped conversation Dad and Ira must have been having. After all, for all anyone had ever known, Ira had been dead for a decade. God, I wanted to get this battle over with so I could listen to my dad, and Victor, and Ira—just listen to what they had to say; even if it was more of them insulting each other, I didn't care. Dad's life was fleshing out around me. He was a person. And one I did want to get to know.
It was just outside the headquarters building that we finally caught up with my girlfriend. "LEX!" I shouted, rushing over to her. A line of our own army's soldiers were in position around the building, with the international snipers on the roof. Lex turned her head toward me, and as soon as I was close enough, I wrapped my arms around her.
"You almost hit the crossbow," she laughed; I noticed at that point that her weapon was brushing the outside of my leg. "Do be careful."
"Yeah, thanks, yeah, same to you, though," I said, pulling back. I grabbed her shoulders and bent so that my eyes were level with hers. "Are you all right? Where's Gaz? Did my sister find you? Ira said she might."
"She did," Lex nodded, looking nervous, "but someone came from nowhere and dragged her off to another fight. I heard her call the attacker MiMi, so—"
"Shit..." I muttered under my breath. Gaz could handle that, though. MiMi, I was confident, was the perfect fit to the cat suggested with her usual hologram: she liked the thrill of the hunt; she preferred playing more than the actual kill. Gaz was the right opponent for that kind of mentality. As soon as we took care of Skoodge, though, I'd have to find my sister.
That was all Tak's design, too, wasn't it? Spread things out. Make the fight look random. No structure, just localized targets... so that she could zero in on her own kills and playthings. Right now, her opponent was Red. He'd been wanting a fight with her—so dammit, I thought, he'd better win. And, you know, stay on our side after that, and everything.
"I've not seen that Invader Skoodge yet," Lex assured me and her father. "Why would he target me?"
"To get to me, I'm sure," I muttered.
Lex shivered. "Well, this battalion here has been doing a fine job keeping this building untouched," she told us. "I've stayed here for the most part, though I was up on the roof for a bit, as well... there doesn't seem to be an end to this Elite, does there?"
"There's gotta be an end somewhere..." I said.
"There always is," Victor added. He unhooked his crossbow, clicked off the safety, and took a glance around.
And then, four of the soldiers standing guard around headquarters were sliced down. One after the other, before any of us could react. I let go of Lex and put up a quick barrier of borrowed energy to stop the attack from coming through, but I was just too late. That was exactly how it was going to be with Skoodge.
Just a little too late.
I think that must have been the very second I realized that the word 'love' had snuck its way into every action I took. Love was a weird thing to figure out, since it was just a level above trust and respect. I trusted and respected everyone in the Corporation. Then there was a little more for people like Victor, and Ira, and even my father; then a little more for Gaz, as there had also been, and remained, for Nacea. And then something different for Lex. People do stupid things when they're in love. Really stupid things. Minds become narrowed. Goals become more focused... on only one thing.
How the hell, then, did Tak know that? Unless she'd just studied humans so damn hard she'd figured it out. Figured out the fact that I'd focus all of my energy on the one person I was actually in love with, rather than broaden my defense to others as well. Goddammit—Goddammit. Numbers from my own army were dead. Because I'd been a little too late.
"Oh, God..." I said under my breath, "no, no, no..."
Lex set a hand on my shoulder. "Dib—"
"Get out of here!" I shouted at the rest of the line. "Get out of here and focus your efforts elsewhere! This is a personal fight!" With that, I built up enough of an energy barrier for them to be able to make an escape. I had a feeling the snipers on the roof caught the memo as well. "No more collateral damage," I said, shaking my head once the others were gone.
"Please don't blame yourself," Lex tried.
"Anyone who dies here today for Earth did so under my order to fight back," I said. "Sorry, hon, I probably am going to take it personally, no matter who takes one for the good of the retaliation."
"Please understand that that really is what makes you a good leader," she insisted.
"It's true," Victor added. "But don't let it cloud your head too much, Dib. You can't prevent every death."
"Okay," I sighed. "But I am going to prevent one."
"You sure about that?" And there was that nasal, taunting tone again. Invader Skoodge.
The sun shone off of the blade of his scythe, which he held in one hand across his shoulders. He was surprisingly terrifying for someone of his body type and height. He grinned, seeming to enjoy the fact that he had the power to take away all I cared about, then stepped closer. Victor loaded his crossbow and I drew my sword. Lex took up her own, and trained it on the Invader. I loved that about her, and respected that about everyone in the Corporation: nobody was okay with being a victim. We were all here to fight back. No matter what.
"Out of the way," Skoodge demanded. "Unless you don't mind if I raise the death count my Tallest had originally set."
"You already did that. Besides. She's not your Tallest," I growled; "Red is."
Skoodge laughed. "And why would we still want to follow him? He was defeated! Anyone who can't stand up to a successor doesn't deserve to be the Tallest!"
So that, like everything else in the Irken Empire, was all about power. Perhaps that was the reason Red seemed so power hungry... or at least, I knew he had issues on the subject. During his stay with us at the Corporation, he'd always seemed a little angry, even in lighter circumstances. He wanted power. His purpose was to lead. Just as mine was.
"So let's just get down to business, hmm?" he prompted, holding out his scythe.
"If you don't mind," said Victor quietly, preparing his crossbow, "I would like to take the first shot."
I couldn't deny him that. Even though I wanted to get back at Skoodge for what he'd already done to Nacea, Victor's love for his daughter was much stronger than my little issue of revenge. So I nodded, and Victor stepped forward, firing three arrows directly at Skoodge.
The Irken knocked two of them out of the way and took the third in the arm, but it didn't harm him. In a quick step, he was upon my godfather, and hauled him back before Victor could ready another arrow. My godfather jabbed back with one elbow, hitting Skoodge in the chest, then spun and whacked the Invader across the head with the full body of his crossbow.
As Skoodge shook himself of the blow and readied his two smaller scythes for a repeat of what he'd done to Nacea, Lex shot several arrows into his PAK, and Victor stepped back to fire a couple directly into Skoodge's head. The Invader picked himself up and yanked the arrows out. "Are you stupid?" he laughed. "My PAK has no regeneration limit!"
"But you can take a beating all the same," Victor snapped at him, shooting two arrows right between Skoodge's eyes. The Invader stumbled back, and I took that moment to rush forward and drive my sword into his side.
Skoodge grabbed it out and shoved me back; I sheathed my sword and spun around, kneeling to blast him twice with static energy from the air around me.
Until Skoodge surprised us all with a surge step, which resulted in him successfully disarming my godfather and holding him back by the arms as a human shield. "DAD!" Lex screamed. Neither of us had a good shot of Skoodge. Shit—I had to teleport again. I had to, no getting around that, not if Victor wasn't going to wind up...
"My second victim," Skoodge grinned.
"Don't you even dare!" I shouted. I took a surge step to wind up behind Skoodge, but his PAK opened, and the four metal spider legs came shooting out. One of them scratched me across the face, under my right eye, but I grabbed the three others and called up a shock to shoot from my hands into his PAK. Skoodge broke off his own additional metal limbs before the attack could hit him, though, and he backed up, yet again putting Lex and I in bad positions to fight back. Before I could reach the Irken again, he was now holding his twin blades against Victor's wrists, exactly where he'd cut Nacea before she died.
"No!" Lex cried. She stepped to the side, but her hands were shaking. Even if she could get a clear aim on Skoodge now...
"Lex, please, don't bother yourself with—" her father began. He was cut off by Skoodge pressing down with his blades until Victor's wrists bled. My godfather took in a deep gasp but did not cry out like Lex did when she'd seen what Skoodge had done. The Irken, in turn, smirked, and didn't look at all like he was about to let go, until I thrust my sword into his side. In one last quick motion, Skoodge let go of Victor, swinging his scythes around once to cut him in the neck just before he turned to force himself off of my sword.
Lex screamed again as her father hit the ground; it didn't seem like he'd be in any position to keep fighting anytime soon, so it was entirely up to me.
My sword hadn't even scratched the Irken. "Perhaps you'd like to meet the same fate?" he grinned at me, holding out his blades. "After I kill your pet here first, of course."
"Don't you call her tha—" I began. But Skoodge was already upon Lex. She screamed but kept her weapon at the ready nonetheless, even though he was much faster than the other Irkens we'd been fighting. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Victor, wincing, pick up his crossbow, his wrists still bleeding, not to mention his neck. Skoodge had just narrowly missed cutting completely into Victor's throat—if he had, the consequences would have been more awful than I wanted to imagine.
I shot a quick orb of energy at Skoodge, making him at least stop in his tracks before he could strike, and before I could attack again, my godfather took action.
"Stay away from my daughter!" Victor shouted forcefully, dashing in front of Lex and sending a volley of arrows at Skoodge. The Irken was not fazed by one of them.
"Still going, huh?" said Skoodge, switching to his single, long scythe. He spun it a few times for effect, catching the sun's rays again on its perfectly polished blade. "Sorry, but when I'm given orders, I stick to 'em." And with that, the blade of his scythe found its way to my godfather's stomach, and he choked, letting go of his weapon as he struggled to breathe. The second Skoodge pulled out his scythe, Victor fell to the ground, his wrists still bleeding, his breath becoming incredibly slow.
My own breath caught. No way. No. No, I was not losing the man who'd become like a true father to me; no. What the hell had I just seen—?
"No!" Lex screamed. Her voice displayed nothing but abject horror, and she fell to her knees beside her father. "No!" she cried out again, tears pouring from her eyes. "Dad, get up! For Heaven's sake, please, Dad, get up!"
My eyes narrowed, and I fixed my gaze on the Irken enemy, my vision even cloudier through the steadily forming tears. My eyes were burning, and I feared for a moment that my sight would go red, but no such thing happened. Hardly even feeling myself in motion, I took my sword up in both hands and lunged at Skoodge, striking almost without thinking again and again until I'd disarmed him, and then I thrust my sword unemotionally straight into his chest.
Skoodge just laughed. "I've already told you," he sneered, "you can't kill me in one piece."
"Fine," was all I said. I pulled my sword out, the hilt feeling hot in my hands. Quickly I darted around behind Skoodge and in one swift motion I cut his PAK off of him. I grabbed the PAK in my left hand, and held it away from me. The wires that had connected the mechanical parasite to his back flailed about in the air; I held it away from my body so the wires wouldn't grab on, and waited to see Skoodge's reaction before I continued my attack. He gasped, and a second later his hologram disappeared. He gazed up at me fearfully as I threw his PAK to the ground and shoved my sword through it.
"It's not that easy!" he tried. "My PAK won't be destroyed so easily!"
Saying nothing in response, I gathered up a large green orb of energy in my right hand, shifting the sword into my left, and aimed to destroy the PAK once and for all. Skoodge trembled and backed away, looking like he was about to run and look for an alternate life source in the next ten minutes.
"You're not going anywhere until I kill you!" Lex shouted at Skoodge. Without a second thought, I blasted his PAK, reducing it to dust. Skoodge cried out in horror, and then Lex forced herself to stand, drawing her crossbow and aiming it shakily at the core of the small Irken in front of her. Closing her eyes, she pulled the trigger, and the arrow swiftly found its way through Skoodge's chest. He gasped for breath for a moment, then closed his eyes, and then he wasn't moving anymore. Lex trembled, then dropped her crossbow and fell to her knees again, draping herself protectively over her father's body, heaving out her sobs.
Checking again to make sure Skoodge was dead, I knealt beside Lex and gently rubbed her back, knowing there was nothing in the world I could say at that point in time. I was so shocked from what had just happened, and so suddenly, that I was at a loss for even remembering that I might potentially be able to heal him. The tattoo on my back began to itch a bit as a reminder of that, but my head was so foggy. One of the people I respected more than anyone I had ever met was lying there in front of me, the same wounds on his neck, wrists and gut that had ended Nacea's life. He wasn't moving. He was not moving.
"Get up..." Lex pleaded again in a whisper. "Please, get up... I can't live without you!"
Just before I could gather myself to see if there was anything I could do, I heard someone rushing up to us. "Oh, God..." It was Ira. "Victor!"
Lex lifted her head, as did I, and Ira cautiously approached us. Both knowing that of all people, Ira may just be the one person who could help, we sat back, and Ira knealt, quickly touching the index and middle fingers of his left hand to a certain spot on Victor's neck.
Ira smiled weakly. "Don't worry, Lex," he said softly. "Your father's alive... but barely. We need to get him inside, right now."
"Oh, God," my girlfriend said in a whisper, her voice trembling and her eyes wide and bleary. "Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God..."
"Give me a hand, would you?" Ira asked. I thought that he was talking to me, but as soon as I began to respond, I noticed that my father had been only a few steps behind the doctor.
My eyes were narrow when I stared up at my dad. It was the only way I could tell him, Don't you dare relapse now. Dad looked—well, jeez, I really couldn't tell because of that damn lab coat and those damn stupid goggles, but—overwhelmed. Over-stimulated. Too much happening all at once. Too bad, though. Something could be done to help Victor Haynsworth, but only if we acted now and only if all four of us were there to see through whatever it took to heal him.
"Oh, God, it's you..." Lex breathed out when my father knealt down beside us.
"Alexandria?" Dad asked, giving her a quick glance over.
"Reunions later!" Ira snapped. "We're getting Victor inside now. Into the infirmary, Charles, you'd better for God's sake remember where that is."
"I'm coming," I offered, as my father carefully lifted Victor off the ground. Ira stood, while Lex, still shaking, clamped her hands around her father's crossbow.
"You're sure about that?" Ira asked me.
"There might be something I can do," I said. "The Meekrob... thing... I could, like..."
"Okay," Ira said quickly. "Come on."
He re-tied his hair into a smoother low ponytail, then ticked his head for my dad to follow him inside. Lex stared after them until they were gone, then let out a huge heave of a sob and tightened her grip on the crossbow until her knuckles were a sick white. "Come on," I said to her as soothingly as I could. "I'm so sorry... Lex, hon, I'm so sorry, I should have..."
Lex shook her head furiously and bent over the crossbow. "We couldn't know," she said. "Just don't you let go of me. You are not going out of my sight."
"Me?" I guessed. I wouldn't have put it past her if she meant the weapon.
She nodded, just as fervently. "Just hold onto me, I don't want to be alone."
"You're not alone," I promised. "You ready to go inside? We need to go in quick, okay?"
My girlfriend nodded again. One-handed, she clipped her own crossbow back on, then let me help her to her feet. She kept a strong, steady grip on her father's ornate weapon, and she clicked the safety on; second nature. When I offered to take it, I knew she'd refuse, which she did. I made sure my own weapon was secure, then took a glance around before I led her back inside.
Invader Skoodge lay dead in the field in front of the headquarters building. At the very last moment, Charlotte Baudelaire walked into view, so I nodded over to her and gestured to the Irken's body. One of Tak's Elite leaders was dead; we had enough leverage over the rest of the Irken army to win the rest of the fight. Charlotte could give orders from there, and she knew enough to find Zim and Gaz in order to shape how the rest of the fight would continue to be drawn out.
Lex did not look back. Nor up, nor anywhere. Only down at her father's crossbow. And then down at her hands, where she had them shaking but folded, one over the other, on her lap several minutes later, when we met up with Ira and Dad in the infirmary.
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Author's Note:
Okay! Second chapter of tonight's update is all set. ^^
Though I feel like my usual range of emoticons really shouldn't be used in this note… Poor Victor. . This part has gone through a lot of different versions. We'll see the result soon.
Thank you so much to everyone who reads! I am in the process of actually for real this time uploading the PDF versions onto my dA (link in my profile), at least of TWFF for tonight; I'll figure out how I want to format the Saga soon too. (New year's resolution was to be more active, so if you are on that site, too, I'd love to say hello~) Should be at least two chapters next week, as well! We'll get back to Gaz's narration, and she'll have a longer chapter next time… her narrations seem so dreadfully short in the Saga, in comparison to the guys'. Ah, well. ^^ Thanks again for reading, and I will see you again next Saturday, January 28th! :3
~Jizena~
PS: Minor voice actor joke/reference somewhere in this chapter. XD (I tend to do that sometimes.)
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