Maybe Zim was a bit too cocky; perhaps he ought to be afraid of what was coming his way.

Leaving the train, the group entered another large atrium. It looked pretty much identical to the last one, with a floor or two above them, and central railings giving the above floors access to the lowest, where they were. Initially, it was eerily quiet within the atrium, setting Zim on-edge. They walked with extreme caution, practically sneaking towards the door maybe fifty meters farther down the hall.

Zim was about to count himself simply paranoid and hurry up and get to the door as soon as possible. Then he heard a loud clatter from the floor above. He immediately darted behind cover and pulled Dib behind it as well. It was a sturdy sort of ledge; yet another seemingly useless bit of architecture that some of the Irken rooms were built with.

It was deafeningly quiet. Zim could only hear him and Dib's breathing. Even GIR was silent. Several tense seconds went by as Zim expected the worst.

Dib began to stand up. "What was—" A shot struck the wall behind Dib. He looked to its source and saw maybe hundreds of Irken soldiers, all at the railings. Dib dropped back down as another ray just barely missed his head.

Zim readied his gun, and Dib did the same. Zim leaned around the cover, ready to pick off some of the assailants, only to see just how many there were. They were densely packed together, with every available position occupied. Some leaned over and aimed at down him from his side of the atrium. Zim shot one in a near panic before retreating back to safety. It seemed like half of the Massive's defense was here, in this room, in this moment. It was more than had been in the port they had arrived in, more than there had been in the room before the train, and more than had been in any other part of the Massive up until now. It wasn't good.

"Well?" Dib asked, looking over to Zim. "How's it look out there?"

Zim turned to Dib, breathing loudly and quickly, his heart rate accelerated. He was silent for a moment, as if he'd forgotten how to speak. Then, "Not good."

Red slammed his fist against the top of the monitor. "How did he get past the soldiers!?"

The navigator held his hands up practically in defense. "I d—don't know, my Tallest. They seemed to use some sort of EMP device, from what the officers have said," he hesitated.

Purple looked somewhere between taken aback and moderately distraught. "How many died from that?"

"It looks like about thirty had their PAKs deactivated by the device. They have less than a minute before their lifeclock is up," the navigator stated, a melancholy grimness in his voice.

"Just from the EMP?" Red questioned, audibly unhappy and upset.

"Y—yes," the navigator responded.

"That's brutal," Purple noted, approaching detached.

Red sighed with a near-rage. Purple put his hand on Red's side. Red glanced over at Purple and loosened his shoulders, his posture softening. In a less angry tone, speaking slower and quieter, "Where is he heading?"

"They'll get off, um, here." The navigator pointed to where the train stopped, at the atrium. "It's not far then to the nearby teleporter room."

Purple stiffened up at that. He tried to pull Red closer to him, but Red's slow return to calmness was interrupted. Red raised his voice, "He's almost at a teleporter room!?"

The navigator flinched. "Y—yes. What do you command?"

"Garrison that hall with every soldier that can make it there in time for his arrival. Fill every space with a soldier. Have him shot to pieces."

"Are you s—sure? That could—"

"Don't question me! He's our greatest threat right now, not anything else!" Red pulled back from the terminal he was leaning over, where the navigator was. Red muttered, "Nearly at a teleporter room. I haven't felt like this since what Zim did in Operation Impending Doom I."

Purple pulled Red closer, into a rather passionate sort of hug. Purple was nervous too, of course. But bothering him more was seeing Red so nervous. Red was typically the one who took action, even if he got more excited about all of it. And Purple thought about the Irkens whose PAKs were just… deactivated. Such a terrible way to die. He certainly hoped Zim wouldn't do something like that to him, even if he did get to the bridge.

Red returned the embrace with Purple for a while. Then he stood up straighter. "Get some mechanics or engineers or whatever. I have an idea for something that could help us out." He sounded confident. Instilled within Purple was the same confidence. Pulling apart, they weren't cowardly showing desperation, illegitimizing the leadership they had been given; they were taking up the torch as was expected of them. A plot was being put into action, and they could expect to continue living, without interference from Zim.

Zim ought to be afraid of what was coming his way.

Dib didn't like that Zim, Zim, was afraid of what was on the other side of their cover. Zim was the only one he could trust on this stuff! The whole alien combat thing, that was. Dib took a peek himself, as quickly as he could, and understood why Zim was as disheartened as he was. Dib started to rack his mind for what to, looking among the small amount of weaponry and whatnot they still had with them for hints. The knowledge that he and Zim could be shot or blown up at any moment wasn't helping in his thinking.

Zim heard what was being shot at them strike the ledge they hid behind. It was a sturdy and thick thing, with plenty of space and protection, and yet still, Zim was worried that they would just drill through it with how much they were shooting at and around it in any attempt to hit them. But, Zim knew he had to do something or they would certainly be surrounded or killed. He kept his head down and thought. He listened to the sounds of the laser fire, trying to ascertain any sort of pattern or pausing in its midst. It wasn't super successful.

But after maybe twenty seconds, although it felt like half an hour, Zim thought he noticed some sort of pattern. Hedging his bets, he waited for when he thought there would be minimal shooting. Dib watched him as he tensed up and got ready to pop up. He was about to say something to Zim, in fact, when he jumped up out of cover.

He shot nearly aimlessly into the area up by the railings, striking several soldiers. Zim was successful in injuring an alright number of assailants, keeping them from returning fire. Dib saw Zim standing up, an easy target, and, eyes widening, quickly grabbed him, practically jumping over to pull him back down. Indeed, at that very moment, a laser ray struck the wall behind them where it would have killed Zim, striking his head, less than a second before.

"Why'd you do that?" Zim, upset, asked.

"You almost just got shot!" Dib argued, "Don't do that again— you'll get killed."

Zim saw the spot where the ray struck the wall behind them. "Erm, maybe you're right." He leaned against the ledge, his side pressed up against the metal. The soldiers up above continued to fire, and it felt that time was running out. What were they actually going to do? They couldn't just sit there and wait to be surrounded and either shot to death or captured.

Dib tried to shoot around the corner, not even peaking around to see where he was shooting, in a vain attempt to not get shot while picking off the soldiers. Only a few seconds after he began shooting at, as he could only but hope, the Irkens, a laser ray struck the gun he was using, nearly knocking it out of his hand. More importantly, the front of the gun was melted similarly to a melted plastic toy. Dib pulled back behind the ledge and looked at it. With an exasperated sigh, he lightly tossed the gun to the side. That was one less gun in their already dwindling supply.

"What do we do?" Dib wondered, nervous. Dib was starting to doubt if he could make it out of all of this, and he was starting to think that he shouldn't have come along with Zim, perhaps.

"Uh," Zim didn't really know himself, "where are the EMPs?" Zim looked around on the floor.

"Right here." Dib lightly sort of pushed the devices across the floor a few inches towards Zim. "There's only two left."

"Right. It might be time to use them." Zim reached for one. He wrapped his hand around the one closest to him and prepared to lean to the side and toss it as hard as he could, up into the fray. But the moment that he was about to, Minimoose floated over and almost into Zim's face.

Zim lowered his hand. "Minimoose! Now's a bad time!" He tried to get them out of the way. After a moment floundering about, with Dib watching, Minimoose began to float upward, out from behind the cover.

"What's he doing?" Dib asked, looking up at Minimoose. Obviously they couldn't just sit around and watch them, given the whole impending capture, but Dib couldn't help but be extremely curious.

"Get down! You're going to get hurt!" Zim tried to reach up and grab them; alas, he was too short. He rolled the EMP in Dib's direction, back with the other.

Dib was taking after the developing panic in Zim's voice. "Will he be okay if he gets shot?"

Minimoose began to float towards the assailants, and Zim simply couldn't risk popping out from behind cover to see, so he brought himself back down behind the ledge. With another bout of genuine concern that Dib was still not used to, "If they hurt themself, I'm going to kill someone."

There was a lot of loud gunfire that was ringing out from where Minimoose was. If either of them had been there, it sounded like they would have been turned to nothing more than a puddle of viscera. Dib remembered Zim's hand earlier and shuddered. Zim, meanwhile, was nervously debating looking around the corner, gun in hand, his head full of anxiety over what would happen to Minimoose.

But suddenly, there was a loud flash, and it seemed like Dib and Zim were blinded. Zim's antennae, or what was left of them, anyway, hurt terribly. Loud noises and sensitive, already injured antennae don't mix, Zim learned, although he could have assumed that beforehand.

The first thing Zim noticed was Minimoose, unscatehed, floating downward, practically right into his arms. They squeaked, and suddenly Zim was indescribably grateful. He should have never doubted them; Minimoose was the ultimate weapon. after all.

Speaking of squeaking— or not at all, really— Zim could only hear ringing. So it was hard to hear Dib practically screaming about how he thought it was tinnitus. But his vision was returning quickly— faster than Dibs' it would seem. Then, with both the relief Zim felt in seeing Minimoose okay as well as the novelty of temporary blindness and deafness fading away, he suddenly grasped the graveness of the situation. He released Minimoose. Then he reached over and grabbed what weapons he could, stood up, and grabbed a sleeve of the still half-blind Dib, and began to make haste.

"What's going on?" Dib asked, relatively panicked.

"We're going," Zim directed. He stumbled slightly as he ran, feeling mildly disoriented. It was going away, though.

Dib's vision came completely back to him just in time for him to look over and see all of the Irken soldiers unconscious— or, dead. Regardless, they weren't shooting at him. Dib's legs were continuing to run beneath him without Dib even really thinking about it. He was being practically dragged along by Zim, and adrenaline served to help him in feeling the seriousness of the situation.

Zim recalled what he had seen on his map. He had planned on going a slightly longer way, utilizing a sort of elevator to the floor above, which would have probably been the only solution if they were still fighting. But now, time was the only concern— arriving before the soldiers got back up. So, as he ran, his PAK's legs began to extend out. And finally, with a push off of the ground by two of the legs, he was jounced up, and the other two legs grappled onto the railings above. And with a swing, he was thrown up onto the floor above, with Dib being dropped onto the ground beside Zim, through all of it. One leg had snagged GIR and had trebuchet-ed him up onto the above floor, too.

Dib stood up and Zim's mechanical legs retracted back into his PAK. Suddenly, a door to their flank shuddered open, revealing reinforcements. With that, Zim and Dib didn't take any more time to recoup— not yet. With Zim leading, they ran for the teleporter room. It wasn't far, and their hurried reaction saved them from being riddled with gunfire. The door was open, which was a welcome change. The two got inside.

This room was a rather sizable space, moderately larger than a classroom, with the ceiling certainly higher— despite the Irkens' height. Speaking of Irkens, there were some of them in here. A crew of about six or seven were managing a wall of monitors, terminals, and switchboards. Zim took a beat, then dropped what weapons and such he had grabbed and started making a move towards the crew. They immediately got up and started running away. Whether that was due to all of the weaponry they had or just the fact that it was Zim, he didn't know. Regardless, with only mild amounts of roughing up, the crew was brought out of the room. Zim ran over and got the door closed within only a second or two. And the two breathed a sigh of relief.

Zim slouched against the metal door as Dib took a seat in a small chair by the large wall-to-wall control panel. Zim lifted his head up after a moment and saw Dib, admiring the wall. And he saw Minimoose, floating toward the large open area up a few short steps, where the teleportation took place. And he saw the tiny pile of weapons he had dropped to the floor. And he didn't see GIR.

He stood up with a start and turned back towards the door he had had his back to. Outside, he could hear GIR. Zim wasn't sure what he was saying, but he was saying something. Zim hurried to open the door again, as Dib started to pay attention to what was going on. The door was opened, and GIR happily and innocently wandered in. Just as Zim started to close the door again, as fast as he could, a soldier appeared from behind the threshold, having used GIR as some sort of Trojan horse.

Zim entered the command just as the soldier entered the room. The door closed behind him with the quiet sounds of hydraulics, and in the soldier's left hand was a large rifle of sorts. And Zim, standing right by the door, was in its sights.