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The haze of some forgotten dream cleared up quickly, leaving a darkened bedroom behind. Out of habit, Dib reached over to the nightstand, grabbed his glasses, and shoved them onto his face. He glared at the alarm clock: Three thirty-six in the morning, it read. He blinked, sat up and looked around the shadow-enveloped room. What had woken him up? The moonlight streamed in through the square window above his bed, reflecting off his pale chest and glasses and casting a tile of light on the carpet in the center of the room. His own silhouette fidgeted in the moonlit square, catching his attention for a millisecond, before he realized irritably what it was. Other than that, there was nothing around him but still shadows. Even the hallway was silent, he noticed through the open door to his room. He tossed his glasses back onto the nightstand and turned and buried his head in his pillow, not bothering pulling the blanket back up over the waist of his blue shorts, trying to focus on worming his way back into a REM cycle. Strange. He always was a light sleeper, but he never woke up unless something stirred him. Even if it was Gaz opening her bedroom door from across the hall, he could still hear it...
Hmn. His bedroom door...
Didn't he close his bedroom door behind him?
He pulled himself out of his pillow, and stared at the open bedroom door. Something about the way it creaked quietly and swung slowly under it's own weight worried him. He reached up for his glasses again, but jerked violently when something claw-like clamped down on his outstretched wrist, holding it to the mattress. He tried to yank it back reflexively, moving just so to dodge something invisible as it pierced the pillow and tossed up feathers with the sound of a silenced gunshot. Dib watched wide-eyed as the feathers settled, panic suddenly overtaking him. He squirmed, wrenching his pinned-down arm painfully, and flailed his legs, throwing the covers off and kicking at absolutely nothing. He was surprised when his flailing feet actually made contact with something. The invisible claw tore itself from his wrist and a ripple appeared in the air above him, lurching backwards into the moonlight from the impact. The white light from the window glanced off of the rippling shape in eerie translucent highlights before it disappeared again. A hard female voice hissed in pain. "Stupid human!"
Dib scrambled against the back wall, now very much awake and staring into the darkness, his heart pounding. "That, that voice..."
Dib was cut off in mid-sentence by a heavy blow to the side of his face, making him land on his side. The claw clamped down again, this time on his neck, holding Dib against the shredded pillow. Dib gasped for air, squirming violently under the force. "I told you I'd be back, Dib..." The sharp voice whispered in his ear. Dib's eyes widened as he realized who the voice belonged to. "...Three years in an unstable orbit around this miserable planet, and I finally get a chance to exact my revenge. Your father has quite the lab downstairs, I see. Everything a girl needs to steal Zim's base out from under him. I'm taking the lab, and, oh, your father too. He'll make an even better figurehead than that weenie guy. And as for you, I think I can figure a way to take over your body, so Zim won't get suspicious. I just have to get inside that swollen head of yours..."
"I... don't think so...Tak..." Dib croaked. Tak's claw relaxed ever so slightly, probably in surprise and amusement at Dib's defiance. But this was all the chance the teenage human needed. "MIMI! ATTACK!" He screamed, and before the invisible irken could move, the gunmetal feline was on her, scratching and piercing with numerous robotic appendages, making her invisibility flicker with each rake. Tak screamed, her static-filled silhouette writhing, trying to dislodge the violent cat-bot from her body. Good thing he'd deactivated Mimi's missiles and lasers, Dib thought, slinking off the bed and grabbing his specs again, still trying to regain his breath. There'd be nothing left of the bedroom now if he hadn't.
Tak finally ripped the modified SIR unit away from her, holding it at arm's length. Mimi had stopped moving and just dangled there, apparently floating above the floor. The catlike robot stared at the floor pitifully, a dimmed light in her red glowing eyes showing her to be offline. Oh, shit, Dib thought, noticing the lifelessness in her eyes. Tak somehow managed to deactivate her. "You thought you could stop me with my own SIR? And I thought you were smarter than the rest of 'em. I know this robot better than you ever--Huh?"
Mimi's eyes pulsed a bright red. Her glare shot upwards, and Dib had to shield his eyes from the flash as a red beam shot from her eyes, making contact with the side of Tak's skull in a satisfying mini-explosion. Pieces of metal flew across the room and scattered on Dib's bed. Tak's invisibility blinked off immediately, showing the same blue-haired human disguise she'd used before. She dropped the SIR unit in her hand and grabbed her temple, screaming in pain. Mimi hit the ground and zipped in front of Dib, hissing like the slow escape of a steam vent, still hell-bent on protecting him. Tak's other arm flying to her head, she stumbled backward into the light. "My... amplifier..." She sunk to her knees and doubled over, shaking. Falling dumbly to her side, she convulsed twice, and then lay still, framed in the moonlit square on the ground.
"Will you turn that damn thing off?" Gaz's screaming voice drifted in from down the hallway. She obviously thought the struggle and scream was part of one of those late-night horror/sci-fi flicks that Dib had the habit of watching.
"Uhhh, Yeah, Gaz! Okay!" Dib yelled back, still staring at the motionless Tak, curled up on the floor. Mimi's hissing stopped, and the little black catbot stopped, walked over and nudged her former master, her secondary programming taking over. Dib stood there for what seemed like forever, staring at the motionless lump in the moonlight, hardly blinking, for fear that she wouldn't be there when he opened his eyes again. When he got up the courage, he started slowly towards her.
"TAK WILL NOT WAKE, MASTER." Mimi chimed, turning towards Dib, the moonlight gleaming off of her. "THE CIRCUIT ON HER PSYCHIC AMPLIFIER HAS BEEN BROKEN. SHE WILL REMAIN LIKE THIS UNTIL IT IS COMPLETED AGAIN." Dib nodded warily, and knelt down beside Mimi. Tak was laying on her side, her face turned from Dib and partially covered in her hair. Trying to get a pulse was gonna be impossible, he thought grumpily. He held out his hand against her mouth. She was still breathing. At first hesitant, he grasped her shoulder and pulled her onto her back. Her head turned towards him, and Dib's hand jerked away at the sight of her face. Her skin flickered from peach-white to green along the left side of her head, circling the burn marks and scratches from Mimi. The thick metal wire that ran across her temple had been smashed and broken off, leaving a pair of jagged metal ends with sickly glowing green-blue tips. They sparked once, causing Dib to jump, and Tak heaved in pain.
"You really tore her up, didn't you Mimi?" Dib mumbled, still keeping his distance from the sparks, glancing at the little robot. Mimi sat there, staring sullenly at Tak. "...I'm sorry, Mimi. I know she was your master. But she was trying to hurt me. I'm your master now, not her."
"DIB IS MASTER." Mimi droned. She looked up at Dib, her red eyes blinking. "WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH TAK?"
"Good question." He said, sitting on the bed. "If I turn her in, then I'll be a hero. They'll know I was right about irkens all along! But..." He trailed off, staring at the helpless irken and her former SIR unit. "Even if they DO believe me, which ISN'T gonna happen, they'll start to hunt for others, putting Zim in danger. ...And Min." He pondered this. Shaking the idea from his head, he stood up off the bed and started grabbing his clothes. "...I can't do it, Mimi." This got Mimi's attention, and she looked up and seemed to smile at him, arching her eyes again. "Maybe I AM going crazy, but I just can't." That was the problem with being human. The moral code wasn't exactly the simplest in the universe, and could sometimes be downright self-destructive. Tak may have tried to kill him, but he wasn't going to stoop to her level and just hand her over to be sliced up by the Swollen Eyeballs. Besides, he thought as he glanced down at the comatose Tak on the floor. If memory served, Zim had a score to settle with her...
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"Forget it, Zim!" Min's voice could be heard echoing through the halls and tunnels of Zim's base. She was giggling as though he had just told an incredibly funny joke. Her voice seemed to bounce down the hall past Dib, dissapearing in echoes behind him.
Dib mumbled under his breath and continued to haul towards the communications chamber the female irken that had attacked him in his own room earlier that night. Still in her human disguise, Tak's limp body was now draped heavily over one of his shoulders, and he held her legs against his chest for support. Fortunately, she wasn't very heavy, even if she was taller than him. Nevertheless, he wasn't exactly happy about having to carry her all the way here from his house in the middle of the night.
"C'mon!" Zim's voice echoed down the hall after Min's.
"No."
"Try it just this once, Min. It's not like it's going to hurt..."
Dib stopped. "Whua?"
"I'm NOT doing that, Zim! It's stupid! It's rediculous! Not to mention really goofy-looking!"
Dib snickered.
"Goofy-looking!? What are you talking about? It's perfect! You'll blend in like a chamelion-rat in the sewers of planet Dirt! It' just a wig and a couple of lenses, like mine, but no human will ever be able to tell you're not one of them! This disguise is so simple, it's perfect! And perfect in it's... uh... simpleness..."
Silence. Dib grunted. A disguise? THAT was what they were talking about? Irritably, he shifted Tak's weight on his shoulder, and continued towards the source of the voices. Meanwhile, in the communications room...
"You can't stay down here forever!" Zim added, leaning back against a work table. The second floor of the communications chamber was nothing more than a wide catwalk that ran in a circle along the domed celieng. Shelves, cabinets and benches were huddled all along the outside wall, holding strange-looking tools and mounds of spare parts, most of which were pretty much useless now and covered in dust. The occasional metal workbench was placed the middle of the walk, giving industrious Invaders some place to work on new communications hardware or, in Zim's case, giving him something to lean against. The guard rail that seperated both him and Min from the hole in the center of the circle, and the 15-foot drop to the first floor, was broken only once to allow access to the elevator, a simple glowing white platform suspended in the air, barely big enough for one person to stand on.
He held two green-irised lenses and a long black wig in one hand. Across from him, Min sat on another workbench, her slender legs dangling off the side.
"Sure I can! Please don't ask me to go up there again, Zim. I don't want to see any more of this planet than I have to. I just don't, okay?" Before, she had been giggling. But now her tone sounded more like a plea than anything else.
Zim narrowed an eye and studied her as she sat on the workbench, fidgeting and staring at the floor. She seemed almost ashamed to look at him. He narrowed his eyes, trying to piece things together. "...Wait a minute.... I think I see what's going on here."
"What?" Min looked up at him, fear starting to darken her face. "Y-you do?"
"Yeah. You're worried that the alien mindset of this planet's filthy inhabitants are going to drive you insane. Heh, heh." He sounded very much amused at the astuteness of his observation. Min quietly exhaled the breath she didn't realize she was holding. "Fear not, Min. Madness is not on these creatures' agendas. Stupidity, yes, oblivion, hopefully, but not madness! True, they may think and act... a little strange... but superior minds like ours can easily descipher any HUMAN'S motives." He paused, staring off into space and absently tapping one of Min's lenses against the side of the table. "...It just takes a little observation... on OUR part." He tried not to stress the OUR too much, but he couldn't really help it. Not that she understood the connotation of the word, anyway. She still looked... worried? Confused? Saddened? He couldn't tell what, but something was still wrong with her. If he had guessed correctly back there in the medical room, than Slark only knew what was on her mind now. Leaving her disguise sitting on the workbench, he watched himself approach the Irken female, take her hands into his, and lean down to look into her suprised crimson eyes. "...If you're worried about the humans finding you out, then don't be. Like you said, they're too stupid to notice most of the time. Besides, you'd have me with you..." He said, giving her hands a gentle squeeze. "They'd have to get through me first." He said, allowing some cockiness to seep into his voice.
For the longest time, all she did was stare at him, the same look of conflict on her face. That was it. Conflict. "...Zim? C-can I ask you something?"
"Yeah?" He answered, drawing even closer, their faces only inches apart. She was opening her mouth to ask, when--
"ZIM! Are you in here?" Dib walked into the communications chamber, still dragging the blue-haired girl. Both Zim's and Min's antennae twitched. Min gave a scowl of frustration, and Zim just turned around and leaned over the guard rail. "God, you're getting heavy." Dib mumbled to his deadweight companion. "Hey, Zim!" He looked around the chamber, not bothering to look upwards, unable to see either Zim and Min on the top floor. Zim, however, could see him just fine though the hole in the celing. "Eergh! Where is that little green--"
"Hey! I resent that!" Zim said jokingly. "Remember that I'm not so little anymore, stinkmonkey! What are you doing here at... this... hour..." His voice trailed off when he noticed what Dib was carrying. "...What the prak?? Dib, that's not--"
"--Tak." Dib finished his sentence. "Yes it is. Apparently, she found her way out of orbit. She followed me to my house. I had a great time trying to fight her off when she attacked me, too." He added sarcastically.
Zim suddenly grabbed ahold of the guard rail and sprung over it, landing softly on his feet in front of Dib some 15 feet below. Above him, he heard Min squeak and saw her lean over the rail. Dib eyed Zim in disbelief. When Zim was only four-foot-nothing, that same maneuver would have ended very badly for him. "That was pretty cool, Zim. Since when have you been able to do that?" Dib asked.
Zim gave a quick smile. "Not very long. I'm beginning to find I can do a lot of things I couldn't before." Zim's smile faded and his eyes narrowed into slits of contempt as he eyed the miserable blue-haired creature on Dib's shoulder. "Is she dead?"
"Knocked out. Is there anywhere I can put--"
"You mean she's not dead yet??" Zim pressed. "You're bringing a dangerous creature like her into MY base? Without making sure she's dead??"
Dib heavily laid Tak down onto the metal floor. Her short hair spread out on the floor in a bluish halo around her head, and the slitted skirt of her purple striped dress fell in folds around her legs. "...Well, yeah..." He answered. The broken metal coil running along Tak's flickering temple sparked again, and Dib gasped and jumped back on his feet away from it. He stared at the disguised irken for a second, a look of pity ALMOST reaching his face before he shook it away and started to stretch out the sore muscles in his back and shoulders. "It would have been a shorter trip, but I had to take the alleys and backstreets. I did NOT feel like having to explain to anyone why I was dragging an unconcious girl through the streets of the city at 4 o'clock in the morning."
Zim's eye twitched. "...what the hell is that supposed to mean?" Lack of sleep really did have an effect on humans, he thought irritably. It made them stupid. Before Dib could explain further, he shoved the human out of the way and looked down at where Tak lay on the ground. "Fine then. If you're not gonna do it..." A metal arm extended from his pak, and Zim grabbed a sinister-looking metal object attached to the end. With inhuman quickness, he pointed the blaster down against Tak's temple, holding the grip sideways. Dib's eyes widened as he saw the power resivoir on the gun charge with a red haze and a high-pitched hum. "Sayanara, Tak." Zim hissed.
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"What the--" *BLAM!* *KEEESH!* *SHHHHH!*
It was hard to tell which one was more surprised at what happened. Min had hit the floor as soon as Zim pulled out the ion pistol, surprised that Zim would just take his blaster out and shoot at someone at point-blank range in an enclosed space. Zim was more surprised than she was because he'd managed to MISS the wretched female at a distance of two inches. Dib, however, had to have been the lucky winner because he was the one who MADE Zim miss by grabbing the gun at the last second. Instead of finding it's mark, the red ion blast had rocketed into a video screen, leaving nothing of it but a few shards of glass panel speckled with black and white static.
Dib still had his hand on the barrel of the blaster, which tingled with the residual energy of the shot. It didn't do anything to help the rush of adrenaline he was riding that made the second for him that night. "...No, Zim." Dib said, his voice shaky. "I-I won't let you kill her, either."
"What?? WHY??" Zim yelled. He dramatically pulled the gun from Dib's grip.
"...I don't know! Call it a hyperactive conscience! I just don't want anyone to die over this! Not unless I can help it."
"Didn't want anyone to--Then WHY did you bring her here?" Zim yelled back. "Dib, you already knew I was going to do this! I told you a long time ago that if I ever saw Tak again, there wouldn't even be enough left for you to dissect. And I meant that. She made an enemy when she tried to take over my mission, and the rivalry between two irken enemies runs stronger than most human social ties. It's almost held sacred near the center of the Empire, and it wouldn't be over 'till one of us destroys the other. I HAVE to do this, Dib. I wouldn't be an irken if I didn't. If you didn't want anyone's hands to get dirty to begin with, why didn't you just hand her over to your father or something? He's a scientist-type human, isn't he? If you had only handed her over to him, this planet of yours would be a whole lot safer, you'd probably get the fame you desire so much, and I wouldn't have to look at her face ever again!"
"Yeah, and it'll let every human out there know what to look for when they're looking for aliens." Dib retorted caustically, pressing a finger into Zim's chest. "You think I haven't thought about it already? If my dad finds out about what happened tonight, he'll ship both her AND me off to be experimented on, her because of what she is, and me because I was in contact with her. And I know that once those government scientist guys find out what she really looks like, they'll find the fact that I'm best friends with the world's only green-skinned freshman very interesting..." His explanation did sound pretty harsh. It almost sounded like a threat, he realized. But he wasn't too interested in sounding pleasant at that point. "It wouldn't turn out any different if I left her at Nasaplace or at the Swollen Eyeball society headquarters. Now, where else could I go?"
Zim opened his mouth to argue, but shut it again, when he realized what Dib was saying. Dib backed off slightly, satisfied he got his point across. "Besides, Zim, without that 'psychic amplifier' piece on the side of her head, there isn't much she can do except lay here." He added, gesturing to the unresponsive blue-haired girl on the floor.
"And how are you so sure about that, Dib?" Zim said incredulously, crossing his arms and narrowing his reflective red eyes. The metal cat robot that saved Dib's life somehow figured this to be a good time to introduce herself by zipping out of the shadows and up onto Zim's shoulder in one shiny black blur. Zim was already a little high-strung from Tak's presence, and he yelped and lurched away in a knee-jerk reaction that caused Mimi to lose her balance and forced her to zip back down to the floor. But she never made it there. In a green blur of inhuman speed, Zim's hand caught the SIR unit in midair and held her swinging by her tail, kicking small black legs in the air. "You!!" Zim growled, recognizing the cat as Tak's old SIR unit. The same SIR unit that nearly sent him through the wall of a skyscraper a few years ago. Still snarling, he latched onto her head with his other hand, intent on ripping the little robot apart.
"WAIT! NO, ZIM!" Dib screamed, darting over and grabbing the robot out of his claws. Zim stood there, at first surprised, then dumbfounded.
"What ARE you doing?? You really HAVE gone insane, haven't you? That thing is Tak's--"
"This THING doesn't belong to Tak anymore." Dib interrupted, his arms caged protectively around the SIR unit. Mimi just sat there innocently, her glowing red eyes wandering around the room. "She hasn't for a while. I've had her for at least six months now, ever since I rebuilt her from the remains I found in Tak's cruiser." Mimi gave up looking the room over, squirmed out of Dib's arms and trotted up to his shoulder, where she sat and stared quietly at Zim, head tilting to one side. "Remember how I told you the ship was unsalvageable, just a pile of scrap metal? Well, I lied. There was one thing that was salvageable: Her." Dib reached up and gave a gentle indicatory poke to the metal catbot sitting on his shoulder. She shifted slightly and curved her eyes in a smile, seemingly happy to be the center of attention. "Heck, if it weren't for her, I wouldn't have managed to beat Tak tonight. She saved my life, Zim."
Zim just stood there, disbelieving. "And WHY didn't you tell me about her before?"
Dib shrugged a shoulder, keeping the other steady for Mimi to perch on. "I dunno."
"DIB HUMAN." Mimi chimed next to his ear. "IS THAT THE IRKEN, MIN, YOU TOLD ME ABOUT?" Dib glanced at her and followed her gaze to Min, who was on one of the many circular lifts in the base, just landing on the floor a few yards from them.
"'Dib Human?'" Zim mumbled blankly, and snickered. "You couldn't even program her to call you 'master', Dib?" He teased.
"What if I didn't WANT her to call me that, huh?" Dib slipped a mock warning glare at Zim, giving the slightest of smiles, thankful for Zim's change in tone. He nodded towards the cat on his shoulder. "Yeah, Mimi. That's Min."
"What's going on??" Min asked, approaching the other two. She looked down at the girl on the floor, eyeing her suspiciously. "...What is that thing? Why were you shooting at it, Zim?"
"Don't let the disguise fool you, Min!" Zim skidded between her and Tak, waving bombastically. "Beneath that hideous earth-stink exterior lies the most dangerous creature in the galaxy! Oooh, the pain she put me through! So much pain, Min! She's ruthless! She's--"
Min pushed past Zim and looked down at the scratched, beaten-up disguised irken on the floor. "She doesn't look all that dangerous to ME. What exactly happened to her, anyway?"
"We did." Dib said, pointing at himself and to the SIR unit on his shoulder.
Min's eyes strayed up to Dib, and settled on his metal companion. "...Another SIR unit? How the prak did YOU get one??" Dib started to explain, but--
"HEY!!" Zim yelled over the conversation. Human, irken and SIR all turned towards him. "I'm still waiting for a good reason not to spatter her brainmeats all over the floor, you know..." He continued, pointing dramatically at Tak, who was still lying motionless on the floor.
"Uhh..." Dib mumbled. Zim had some thousand-year-old social creed backing him up. Not only that, he somehow considered this a test of his irkenhood, from what he could tell. There Zim stood in his human clothes, one eye narrowed in impatience, clutching the blaster in one claw with the other shoved into the pocket of his jeans. A strangely human-looking stance, Dib noticed. No wonder he wanted to keep petty customs like that alive. It may be the only thing irken that he could still call his own. Dib could tell that had been driving him crazy. He'd been losing his irken-ness ever since he was marooned here...
Stranded here...
"...Hey, Zim." Dib started, his eyes lighting up. "You know what she was REALLY after when she attacked me tonight? She wanted to use the stuff at MY house to get into YOUR base so she could get off this planet and back to Irk, or whatever it's called. Do you realize what that means, Zim?" He leaned in and pointed down at her. "She's stranded here, too. She's alone, forgotten, on a strange planet, with NO WAY HOME. So, I figure the only thing worse than KILLING her..." He paused, smiling deviously. "...would be to SPARE her."
Zim looked quizzically at Dib, then down at Tak, then up at Dib again. An evil smile spread slowly across his face. "...You're right. I failed to think about it in that way. She's created her own prison here! Now she can rot in it." A metallic arm extended from Zim's pak, grabbed the blaster pistol out of his hand, and disappeared behind him. "Congratulations, Dib, you've just saved that miserable slobee's life. In fact, I'm going to take it upon myself to repair that amplifier thingy and wake her up, just to see the look on her face when I tell her there's no way off this rock!"
"God, you're evil, Zim." Dib said, devious smirk still plastered across his face.
"That's right, I am."
The haze of some forgotten dream cleared up quickly, leaving a darkened bedroom behind. Out of habit, Dib reached over to the nightstand, grabbed his glasses, and shoved them onto his face. He glared at the alarm clock: Three thirty-six in the morning, it read. He blinked, sat up and looked around the shadow-enveloped room. What had woken him up? The moonlight streamed in through the square window above his bed, reflecting off his pale chest and glasses and casting a tile of light on the carpet in the center of the room. His own silhouette fidgeted in the moonlit square, catching his attention for a millisecond, before he realized irritably what it was. Other than that, there was nothing around him but still shadows. Even the hallway was silent, he noticed through the open door to his room. He tossed his glasses back onto the nightstand and turned and buried his head in his pillow, not bothering pulling the blanket back up over the waist of his blue shorts, trying to focus on worming his way back into a REM cycle. Strange. He always was a light sleeper, but he never woke up unless something stirred him. Even if it was Gaz opening her bedroom door from across the hall, he could still hear it...
Hmn. His bedroom door...
Didn't he close his bedroom door behind him?
He pulled himself out of his pillow, and stared at the open bedroom door. Something about the way it creaked quietly and swung slowly under it's own weight worried him. He reached up for his glasses again, but jerked violently when something claw-like clamped down on his outstretched wrist, holding it to the mattress. He tried to yank it back reflexively, moving just so to dodge something invisible as it pierced the pillow and tossed up feathers with the sound of a silenced gunshot. Dib watched wide-eyed as the feathers settled, panic suddenly overtaking him. He squirmed, wrenching his pinned-down arm painfully, and flailed his legs, throwing the covers off and kicking at absolutely nothing. He was surprised when his flailing feet actually made contact with something. The invisible claw tore itself from his wrist and a ripple appeared in the air above him, lurching backwards into the moonlight from the impact. The white light from the window glanced off of the rippling shape in eerie translucent highlights before it disappeared again. A hard female voice hissed in pain. "Stupid human!"
Dib scrambled against the back wall, now very much awake and staring into the darkness, his heart pounding. "That, that voice..."
Dib was cut off in mid-sentence by a heavy blow to the side of his face, making him land on his side. The claw clamped down again, this time on his neck, holding Dib against the shredded pillow. Dib gasped for air, squirming violently under the force. "I told you I'd be back, Dib..." The sharp voice whispered in his ear. Dib's eyes widened as he realized who the voice belonged to. "...Three years in an unstable orbit around this miserable planet, and I finally get a chance to exact my revenge. Your father has quite the lab downstairs, I see. Everything a girl needs to steal Zim's base out from under him. I'm taking the lab, and, oh, your father too. He'll make an even better figurehead than that weenie guy. And as for you, I think I can figure a way to take over your body, so Zim won't get suspicious. I just have to get inside that swollen head of yours..."
"I... don't think so...Tak..." Dib croaked. Tak's claw relaxed ever so slightly, probably in surprise and amusement at Dib's defiance. But this was all the chance the teenage human needed. "MIMI! ATTACK!" He screamed, and before the invisible irken could move, the gunmetal feline was on her, scratching and piercing with numerous robotic appendages, making her invisibility flicker with each rake. Tak screamed, her static-filled silhouette writhing, trying to dislodge the violent cat-bot from her body. Good thing he'd deactivated Mimi's missiles and lasers, Dib thought, slinking off the bed and grabbing his specs again, still trying to regain his breath. There'd be nothing left of the bedroom now if he hadn't.
Tak finally ripped the modified SIR unit away from her, holding it at arm's length. Mimi had stopped moving and just dangled there, apparently floating above the floor. The catlike robot stared at the floor pitifully, a dimmed light in her red glowing eyes showing her to be offline. Oh, shit, Dib thought, noticing the lifelessness in her eyes. Tak somehow managed to deactivate her. "You thought you could stop me with my own SIR? And I thought you were smarter than the rest of 'em. I know this robot better than you ever--Huh?"
Mimi's eyes pulsed a bright red. Her glare shot upwards, and Dib had to shield his eyes from the flash as a red beam shot from her eyes, making contact with the side of Tak's skull in a satisfying mini-explosion. Pieces of metal flew across the room and scattered on Dib's bed. Tak's invisibility blinked off immediately, showing the same blue-haired human disguise she'd used before. She dropped the SIR unit in her hand and grabbed her temple, screaming in pain. Mimi hit the ground and zipped in front of Dib, hissing like the slow escape of a steam vent, still hell-bent on protecting him. Tak's other arm flying to her head, she stumbled backward into the light. "My... amplifier..." She sunk to her knees and doubled over, shaking. Falling dumbly to her side, she convulsed twice, and then lay still, framed in the moonlit square on the ground.
"Will you turn that damn thing off?" Gaz's screaming voice drifted in from down the hallway. She obviously thought the struggle and scream was part of one of those late-night horror/sci-fi flicks that Dib had the habit of watching.
"Uhhh, Yeah, Gaz! Okay!" Dib yelled back, still staring at the motionless Tak, curled up on the floor. Mimi's hissing stopped, and the little black catbot stopped, walked over and nudged her former master, her secondary programming taking over. Dib stood there for what seemed like forever, staring at the motionless lump in the moonlight, hardly blinking, for fear that she wouldn't be there when he opened his eyes again. When he got up the courage, he started slowly towards her.
"TAK WILL NOT WAKE, MASTER." Mimi chimed, turning towards Dib, the moonlight gleaming off of her. "THE CIRCUIT ON HER PSYCHIC AMPLIFIER HAS BEEN BROKEN. SHE WILL REMAIN LIKE THIS UNTIL IT IS COMPLETED AGAIN." Dib nodded warily, and knelt down beside Mimi. Tak was laying on her side, her face turned from Dib and partially covered in her hair. Trying to get a pulse was gonna be impossible, he thought grumpily. He held out his hand against her mouth. She was still breathing. At first hesitant, he grasped her shoulder and pulled her onto her back. Her head turned towards him, and Dib's hand jerked away at the sight of her face. Her skin flickered from peach-white to green along the left side of her head, circling the burn marks and scratches from Mimi. The thick metal wire that ran across her temple had been smashed and broken off, leaving a pair of jagged metal ends with sickly glowing green-blue tips. They sparked once, causing Dib to jump, and Tak heaved in pain.
"You really tore her up, didn't you Mimi?" Dib mumbled, still keeping his distance from the sparks, glancing at the little robot. Mimi sat there, staring sullenly at Tak. "...I'm sorry, Mimi. I know she was your master. But she was trying to hurt me. I'm your master now, not her."
"DIB IS MASTER." Mimi droned. She looked up at Dib, her red eyes blinking. "WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH TAK?"
"Good question." He said, sitting on the bed. "If I turn her in, then I'll be a hero. They'll know I was right about irkens all along! But..." He trailed off, staring at the helpless irken and her former SIR unit. "Even if they DO believe me, which ISN'T gonna happen, they'll start to hunt for others, putting Zim in danger. ...And Min." He pondered this. Shaking the idea from his head, he stood up off the bed and started grabbing his clothes. "...I can't do it, Mimi." This got Mimi's attention, and she looked up and seemed to smile at him, arching her eyes again. "Maybe I AM going crazy, but I just can't." That was the problem with being human. The moral code wasn't exactly the simplest in the universe, and could sometimes be downright self-destructive. Tak may have tried to kill him, but he wasn't going to stoop to her level and just hand her over to be sliced up by the Swollen Eyeballs. Besides, he thought as he glanced down at the comatose Tak on the floor. If memory served, Zim had a score to settle with her...
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"Forget it, Zim!" Min's voice could be heard echoing through the halls and tunnels of Zim's base. She was giggling as though he had just told an incredibly funny joke. Her voice seemed to bounce down the hall past Dib, dissapearing in echoes behind him.
Dib mumbled under his breath and continued to haul towards the communications chamber the female irken that had attacked him in his own room earlier that night. Still in her human disguise, Tak's limp body was now draped heavily over one of his shoulders, and he held her legs against his chest for support. Fortunately, she wasn't very heavy, even if she was taller than him. Nevertheless, he wasn't exactly happy about having to carry her all the way here from his house in the middle of the night.
"C'mon!" Zim's voice echoed down the hall after Min's.
"No."
"Try it just this once, Min. It's not like it's going to hurt..."
Dib stopped. "Whua?"
"I'm NOT doing that, Zim! It's stupid! It's rediculous! Not to mention really goofy-looking!"
Dib snickered.
"Goofy-looking!? What are you talking about? It's perfect! You'll blend in like a chamelion-rat in the sewers of planet Dirt! It' just a wig and a couple of lenses, like mine, but no human will ever be able to tell you're not one of them! This disguise is so simple, it's perfect! And perfect in it's... uh... simpleness..."
Silence. Dib grunted. A disguise? THAT was what they were talking about? Irritably, he shifted Tak's weight on his shoulder, and continued towards the source of the voices. Meanwhile, in the communications room...
"You can't stay down here forever!" Zim added, leaning back against a work table. The second floor of the communications chamber was nothing more than a wide catwalk that ran in a circle along the domed celieng. Shelves, cabinets and benches were huddled all along the outside wall, holding strange-looking tools and mounds of spare parts, most of which were pretty much useless now and covered in dust. The occasional metal workbench was placed the middle of the walk, giving industrious Invaders some place to work on new communications hardware or, in Zim's case, giving him something to lean against. The guard rail that seperated both him and Min from the hole in the center of the circle, and the 15-foot drop to the first floor, was broken only once to allow access to the elevator, a simple glowing white platform suspended in the air, barely big enough for one person to stand on.
He held two green-irised lenses and a long black wig in one hand. Across from him, Min sat on another workbench, her slender legs dangling off the side.
"Sure I can! Please don't ask me to go up there again, Zim. I don't want to see any more of this planet than I have to. I just don't, okay?" Before, she had been giggling. But now her tone sounded more like a plea than anything else.
Zim narrowed an eye and studied her as she sat on the workbench, fidgeting and staring at the floor. She seemed almost ashamed to look at him. He narrowed his eyes, trying to piece things together. "...Wait a minute.... I think I see what's going on here."
"What?" Min looked up at him, fear starting to darken her face. "Y-you do?"
"Yeah. You're worried that the alien mindset of this planet's filthy inhabitants are going to drive you insane. Heh, heh." He sounded very much amused at the astuteness of his observation. Min quietly exhaled the breath she didn't realize she was holding. "Fear not, Min. Madness is not on these creatures' agendas. Stupidity, yes, oblivion, hopefully, but not madness! True, they may think and act... a little strange... but superior minds like ours can easily descipher any HUMAN'S motives." He paused, staring off into space and absently tapping one of Min's lenses against the side of the table. "...It just takes a little observation... on OUR part." He tried not to stress the OUR too much, but he couldn't really help it. Not that she understood the connotation of the word, anyway. She still looked... worried? Confused? Saddened? He couldn't tell what, but something was still wrong with her. If he had guessed correctly back there in the medical room, than Slark only knew what was on her mind now. Leaving her disguise sitting on the workbench, he watched himself approach the Irken female, take her hands into his, and lean down to look into her suprised crimson eyes. "...If you're worried about the humans finding you out, then don't be. Like you said, they're too stupid to notice most of the time. Besides, you'd have me with you..." He said, giving her hands a gentle squeeze. "They'd have to get through me first." He said, allowing some cockiness to seep into his voice.
For the longest time, all she did was stare at him, the same look of conflict on her face. That was it. Conflict. "...Zim? C-can I ask you something?"
"Yeah?" He answered, drawing even closer, their faces only inches apart. She was opening her mouth to ask, when--
"ZIM! Are you in here?" Dib walked into the communications chamber, still dragging the blue-haired girl. Both Zim's and Min's antennae twitched. Min gave a scowl of frustration, and Zim just turned around and leaned over the guard rail. "God, you're getting heavy." Dib mumbled to his deadweight companion. "Hey, Zim!" He looked around the chamber, not bothering to look upwards, unable to see either Zim and Min on the top floor. Zim, however, could see him just fine though the hole in the celing. "Eergh! Where is that little green--"
"Hey! I resent that!" Zim said jokingly. "Remember that I'm not so little anymore, stinkmonkey! What are you doing here at... this... hour..." His voice trailed off when he noticed what Dib was carrying. "...What the prak?? Dib, that's not--"
"--Tak." Dib finished his sentence. "Yes it is. Apparently, she found her way out of orbit. She followed me to my house. I had a great time trying to fight her off when she attacked me, too." He added sarcastically.
Zim suddenly grabbed ahold of the guard rail and sprung over it, landing softly on his feet in front of Dib some 15 feet below. Above him, he heard Min squeak and saw her lean over the rail. Dib eyed Zim in disbelief. When Zim was only four-foot-nothing, that same maneuver would have ended very badly for him. "That was pretty cool, Zim. Since when have you been able to do that?" Dib asked.
Zim gave a quick smile. "Not very long. I'm beginning to find I can do a lot of things I couldn't before." Zim's smile faded and his eyes narrowed into slits of contempt as he eyed the miserable blue-haired creature on Dib's shoulder. "Is she dead?"
"Knocked out. Is there anywhere I can put--"
"You mean she's not dead yet??" Zim pressed. "You're bringing a dangerous creature like her into MY base? Without making sure she's dead??"
Dib heavily laid Tak down onto the metal floor. Her short hair spread out on the floor in a bluish halo around her head, and the slitted skirt of her purple striped dress fell in folds around her legs. "...Well, yeah..." He answered. The broken metal coil running along Tak's flickering temple sparked again, and Dib gasped and jumped back on his feet away from it. He stared at the disguised irken for a second, a look of pity ALMOST reaching his face before he shook it away and started to stretch out the sore muscles in his back and shoulders. "It would have been a shorter trip, but I had to take the alleys and backstreets. I did NOT feel like having to explain to anyone why I was dragging an unconcious girl through the streets of the city at 4 o'clock in the morning."
Zim's eye twitched. "...what the hell is that supposed to mean?" Lack of sleep really did have an effect on humans, he thought irritably. It made them stupid. Before Dib could explain further, he shoved the human out of the way and looked down at where Tak lay on the ground. "Fine then. If you're not gonna do it..." A metal arm extended from his pak, and Zim grabbed a sinister-looking metal object attached to the end. With inhuman quickness, he pointed the blaster down against Tak's temple, holding the grip sideways. Dib's eyes widened as he saw the power resivoir on the gun charge with a red haze and a high-pitched hum. "Sayanara, Tak." Zim hissed.
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"What the--" *BLAM!* *KEEESH!* *SHHHHH!*
It was hard to tell which one was more surprised at what happened. Min had hit the floor as soon as Zim pulled out the ion pistol, surprised that Zim would just take his blaster out and shoot at someone at point-blank range in an enclosed space. Zim was more surprised than she was because he'd managed to MISS the wretched female at a distance of two inches. Dib, however, had to have been the lucky winner because he was the one who MADE Zim miss by grabbing the gun at the last second. Instead of finding it's mark, the red ion blast had rocketed into a video screen, leaving nothing of it but a few shards of glass panel speckled with black and white static.
Dib still had his hand on the barrel of the blaster, which tingled with the residual energy of the shot. It didn't do anything to help the rush of adrenaline he was riding that made the second for him that night. "...No, Zim." Dib said, his voice shaky. "I-I won't let you kill her, either."
"What?? WHY??" Zim yelled. He dramatically pulled the gun from Dib's grip.
"...I don't know! Call it a hyperactive conscience! I just don't want anyone to die over this! Not unless I can help it."
"Didn't want anyone to--Then WHY did you bring her here?" Zim yelled back. "Dib, you already knew I was going to do this! I told you a long time ago that if I ever saw Tak again, there wouldn't even be enough left for you to dissect. And I meant that. She made an enemy when she tried to take over my mission, and the rivalry between two irken enemies runs stronger than most human social ties. It's almost held sacred near the center of the Empire, and it wouldn't be over 'till one of us destroys the other. I HAVE to do this, Dib. I wouldn't be an irken if I didn't. If you didn't want anyone's hands to get dirty to begin with, why didn't you just hand her over to your father or something? He's a scientist-type human, isn't he? If you had only handed her over to him, this planet of yours would be a whole lot safer, you'd probably get the fame you desire so much, and I wouldn't have to look at her face ever again!"
"Yeah, and it'll let every human out there know what to look for when they're looking for aliens." Dib retorted caustically, pressing a finger into Zim's chest. "You think I haven't thought about it already? If my dad finds out about what happened tonight, he'll ship both her AND me off to be experimented on, her because of what she is, and me because I was in contact with her. And I know that once those government scientist guys find out what she really looks like, they'll find the fact that I'm best friends with the world's only green-skinned freshman very interesting..." His explanation did sound pretty harsh. It almost sounded like a threat, he realized. But he wasn't too interested in sounding pleasant at that point. "It wouldn't turn out any different if I left her at Nasaplace or at the Swollen Eyeball society headquarters. Now, where else could I go?"
Zim opened his mouth to argue, but shut it again, when he realized what Dib was saying. Dib backed off slightly, satisfied he got his point across. "Besides, Zim, without that 'psychic amplifier' piece on the side of her head, there isn't much she can do except lay here." He added, gesturing to the unresponsive blue-haired girl on the floor.
"And how are you so sure about that, Dib?" Zim said incredulously, crossing his arms and narrowing his reflective red eyes. The metal cat robot that saved Dib's life somehow figured this to be a good time to introduce herself by zipping out of the shadows and up onto Zim's shoulder in one shiny black blur. Zim was already a little high-strung from Tak's presence, and he yelped and lurched away in a knee-jerk reaction that caused Mimi to lose her balance and forced her to zip back down to the floor. But she never made it there. In a green blur of inhuman speed, Zim's hand caught the SIR unit in midair and held her swinging by her tail, kicking small black legs in the air. "You!!" Zim growled, recognizing the cat as Tak's old SIR unit. The same SIR unit that nearly sent him through the wall of a skyscraper a few years ago. Still snarling, he latched onto her head with his other hand, intent on ripping the little robot apart.
"WAIT! NO, ZIM!" Dib screamed, darting over and grabbing the robot out of his claws. Zim stood there, at first surprised, then dumbfounded.
"What ARE you doing?? You really HAVE gone insane, haven't you? That thing is Tak's--"
"This THING doesn't belong to Tak anymore." Dib interrupted, his arms caged protectively around the SIR unit. Mimi just sat there innocently, her glowing red eyes wandering around the room. "She hasn't for a while. I've had her for at least six months now, ever since I rebuilt her from the remains I found in Tak's cruiser." Mimi gave up looking the room over, squirmed out of Dib's arms and trotted up to his shoulder, where she sat and stared quietly at Zim, head tilting to one side. "Remember how I told you the ship was unsalvageable, just a pile of scrap metal? Well, I lied. There was one thing that was salvageable: Her." Dib reached up and gave a gentle indicatory poke to the metal catbot sitting on his shoulder. She shifted slightly and curved her eyes in a smile, seemingly happy to be the center of attention. "Heck, if it weren't for her, I wouldn't have managed to beat Tak tonight. She saved my life, Zim."
Zim just stood there, disbelieving. "And WHY didn't you tell me about her before?"
Dib shrugged a shoulder, keeping the other steady for Mimi to perch on. "I dunno."
"DIB HUMAN." Mimi chimed next to his ear. "IS THAT THE IRKEN, MIN, YOU TOLD ME ABOUT?" Dib glanced at her and followed her gaze to Min, who was on one of the many circular lifts in the base, just landing on the floor a few yards from them.
"'Dib Human?'" Zim mumbled blankly, and snickered. "You couldn't even program her to call you 'master', Dib?" He teased.
"What if I didn't WANT her to call me that, huh?" Dib slipped a mock warning glare at Zim, giving the slightest of smiles, thankful for Zim's change in tone. He nodded towards the cat on his shoulder. "Yeah, Mimi. That's Min."
"What's going on??" Min asked, approaching the other two. She looked down at the girl on the floor, eyeing her suspiciously. "...What is that thing? Why were you shooting at it, Zim?"
"Don't let the disguise fool you, Min!" Zim skidded between her and Tak, waving bombastically. "Beneath that hideous earth-stink exterior lies the most dangerous creature in the galaxy! Oooh, the pain she put me through! So much pain, Min! She's ruthless! She's--"
Min pushed past Zim and looked down at the scratched, beaten-up disguised irken on the floor. "She doesn't look all that dangerous to ME. What exactly happened to her, anyway?"
"We did." Dib said, pointing at himself and to the SIR unit on his shoulder.
Min's eyes strayed up to Dib, and settled on his metal companion. "...Another SIR unit? How the prak did YOU get one??" Dib started to explain, but--
"HEY!!" Zim yelled over the conversation. Human, irken and SIR all turned towards him. "I'm still waiting for a good reason not to spatter her brainmeats all over the floor, you know..." He continued, pointing dramatically at Tak, who was still lying motionless on the floor.
"Uhh..." Dib mumbled. Zim had some thousand-year-old social creed backing him up. Not only that, he somehow considered this a test of his irkenhood, from what he could tell. There Zim stood in his human clothes, one eye narrowed in impatience, clutching the blaster in one claw with the other shoved into the pocket of his jeans. A strangely human-looking stance, Dib noticed. No wonder he wanted to keep petty customs like that alive. It may be the only thing irken that he could still call his own. Dib could tell that had been driving him crazy. He'd been losing his irken-ness ever since he was marooned here...
Stranded here...
"...Hey, Zim." Dib started, his eyes lighting up. "You know what she was REALLY after when she attacked me tonight? She wanted to use the stuff at MY house to get into YOUR base so she could get off this planet and back to Irk, or whatever it's called. Do you realize what that means, Zim?" He leaned in and pointed down at her. "She's stranded here, too. She's alone, forgotten, on a strange planet, with NO WAY HOME. So, I figure the only thing worse than KILLING her..." He paused, smiling deviously. "...would be to SPARE her."
Zim looked quizzically at Dib, then down at Tak, then up at Dib again. An evil smile spread slowly across his face. "...You're right. I failed to think about it in that way. She's created her own prison here! Now she can rot in it." A metallic arm extended from Zim's pak, grabbed the blaster pistol out of his hand, and disappeared behind him. "Congratulations, Dib, you've just saved that miserable slobee's life. In fact, I'm going to take it upon myself to repair that amplifier thingy and wake her up, just to see the look on her face when I tell her there's no way off this rock!"
"God, you're evil, Zim." Dib said, devious smirk still plastered across his face.
"That's right, I am."