/004. Insides.
She could look like anything. He realizes this later, when she reappears. Mostly, she likes to seem like a rangy girl too thin to be an athlete, with purple hair and clothes because Tak likes purple. As much as an Irken can be said to like anything.
So, Dib wouldn't say she likes him; maybe that it's satisfying to her, to game with him, to fuck with him. He gets his own back, now and again, by fucking with her. Literally, figuratively.
The hologram can mimic, although she doesn't often stoop to that; now and again to make fun of him. She can put on Gretchen's face, Gaz', Jessica's, Zita's, sneer at him with a coldness beyond any of those four girls, while he peels her clothes away from her skin. "Oooh, Dib," she might say, pursing Gretchen's gentle mouth cruelly, "So forward. Please don't."
If she says please, he knows, it's another part of her game. Blackly playful thing that she is.
Or she can look like other girls, ones she creates. A pudgy-faced brunette staring at him with feigned disinterest, or a girl hot and molten, red-haired, freckled. "Nice, nice," he might compliment her, fingering the fine strands of her hair. "The hologram's impressive. Force fields for texture? Tell me the secret someday."
The sneer is her default expression. "You get aroused by alien tech, boy? No wonder humanity rejects you. I reject you too."
"But you're still here," he says, spreading his hands across her narrow back. The pak is one thing that doesn't change: it's always there, a cold and humming roundness beneath his palms. "So cut the crap and change back."
She'll show him her true form because she wants to revolt him. Not with the tight green skin or the curled antennae or the enormous purple eyes: she knows the Irken form doesn't disgust him after so much exposure. She wants to drive him mad with self-hatred, that he searches for these cruel, clean-cut creatures, over a girl with his own kind.
He'll go along with it, because he likes to imagine someday that she'll slip up and spill her guts to him. Give him an opening so he can see that mind for the block of code it is. Get past her glittery, deceptive defenses. Tak's like broken glass imbedded on top of a wall. So pretty to look at, shining in the sun, and it cuts the shit out of any moron stupid enough to touch it.
Because it doesn't matter to him, what she looks like on the outside. The essence (on a human he'd call it a soul, but he wouldn't grant a soul to an Irken) is always the same. He can spot it flashing like a lighthouse on the shore.
She doesn't know, it's not the tech that gets to him, or the burn of his xenophilic desire. Dib just has a fetish for the hard, cold truth over any kind of lie.
/end
New poll, guys. Go vote? Senri is curious.
