Also, this is NOT a ZADR. (Zim and Dib Romance) I don't care how you interpret it. I can't understand the people who write those. They're worse than the people who give Zim a girlfriend. SEVERE OOCs COMING! It's a few years after the show was cancelled, so I figure they might have changed a little, at least.
Zim grinned at his nemesis. He had won today's battle.
"HA! Today, Dib, I have driven two of your pathetic earth teachers insane!" He beamed. Dib frowned.
"Y'no, Zim, It's only the second week of school. Now, you have to put up with your creations all year." Zim's smile flickered.
"Yes, Dib…But so do you! That was my intent! So now you won't get a good education! SUCCESS!" He strutted off. Dib sighed. After three years of Zim's melodramatics, they no longer impressed him. He wondered how Zim always registered success, no matter how badly he had screwed up. He put his textbooks into his locker. Algebra II, AP English, Social Studies 9. He put his Speech textbook into his bookbag and walked outside.
Zim walked down his sidewalk. The lawn gnomes eyed him suspiciously. GIR dug holes in the front yard, only to have them automatically filled in by the house. GIR looked forlornly at the grass already starting to grow. Then he dug another hole. Zim sighed, and walked inside.
"Ziiiim," The computer whined "I've been filling in these holes all day. Why can't we get a babysitter or something? I never have any free time!"
He made a mental note to undo the upgrade he had made on the computers artificial personality. It was a little out of hand. A little red light blinked on the console. Zim grinned. The weekly report to the Tallest was just what he needed. But why had they called him?
"Eh, Zim?" Said Red. He looked at Purple, grinning.
"Oh, go on. You drew the long straw. Quit gloating." Ordered Purple.
"Ok, here goes. Zim, we have something really important we've been meaning to tell you. You see, you haven't been doing a nything really funny for a while, so…"
Dib raised his hand. Ms. Bitters looked at him with horror. "What is it, Dib?" Dib stood up.
"Ms. Bitters, how is it that you teach a Middle Skool class all day, but you can still teach us here most periods?" "That has to do with the unholy force disconnecting the Skools from the rest of the time zone. That's covered in 10th grade." Ms. Bitters started doom-speaking more.
"Ms. Bitters?" Ms. Bitters growled.
"Ms. Bitters, isn't the Skool supposed to check on a student when they've been missing for more than two days"
"Yes. Yes they are."
"So where's Zim? He's been missing a whole week."
"Just because the government makes it a law doesn't mean we have to."
"Um… OK." Dib sat down.
Dib stood outside the glowing green house. It wasn't even his fault he was there. Ever since his dad had moved them into the house next door, Dib was at that house evry day. (The poor guy next to Zim finally got tired of the wires and moved)
He couldn't decide if it was good, because he could spy on Zim, or bad because he was next door to his hated enemy. He sighed. While he was there…well…he might as well make sure the lawn gnomes still worked. He walked up the path. The gnomes didn't move. This worried him a little. He walked to the front door and kicked it open, expecting to see Zim with some kind of arsenal. The room was empty. Except for a little green dog, who paced worriedly. In three years, Zim had updated the little android quite a lot. He could speak in a semi-regular voice now. His sentences made a little more sense.
And he was still horribly loud. And still played with Pig.
"Big-headed Dib boy!"
"Yeah?"
"DOES YOU GOT A BOMB!?!?!?!?!"
"Ummm…no."
"Ok. Could you help me with this?"
"With what?"
"Master won't eat. Or move. Or do anything but cry."
"ZIM'S CRYING?!?!"
"Yeah, but don't tell him I told you. He'll go off yelling again."
"Again."
"Uh-huh. Couple days ago, he got a call from the Big Tall Guys. I dunno what they said, but he went all nuts and broke stuff"
"Yeah!" Intoned the Computer. "It been five days, and I still haven't fixed it all. That flame thrower…wow."
Dib quirked an eyebrow. Why hadn't he used this destructive power on Earth, instead of his base?
"Ok. What do you want me to do."
"Just help me carry him."
GIR marched off, toward the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator door, and walked inside. Dib followed. The door closed, and Dib felt the fridge jerk. They were going down.
When the door opened, Dib half-expected Zim to be there with a triumphant look on his face, but he wasn't. Dib was glad. The little blue robot hopped off into the purple shadows of the base. Dib wondered how far down they were. Probably really far.
"OOOVVER HEEEERE!" Came echoing out of the darkness. Dib followed the voice. It was pretty dark down here.
"See? He's been right there for about 5 days. I can't get him to do anything."
Dib gasped. His once proud enemy lay in the metal floor. He was sleeping. Dib realized the robot's need to get Zim to eat: He looked emaciated. Briefly, Dib wondered what Zim ate. He hated all Earth food.
"I was thinking we should move him up into the house. At least there's light up there"
Dib nodded. The computer had a point. He looked over at GIR, who was squeezing a rubber moose.
"GIR, can you get the right side? I'll get the left." Dib pulled Zim up. Zim groaned and opened his ruby eyes. They widened in shock.
"GIR! There's an intruder in the base! Defensive mode!" GIR didn't respond. He just grabbed Zim's right arm. Zim kicked at Dib.
"What have you done to GIR? I made sure he would go into defensive mode! I fixed that on Halloween! He's been working for THREE YEARS!" Dib shrugged.
"I didn't do anything to him. He got ME to come down here." Zim glared, but then dropped it. Dib had made it into his base.
And he was powerless to stop anything Dib wanted to do. He didn't know that GIR's digging had screwed up the gnomes. The computer hadn't fixed them yet.
"Actually, Sir," Said the computer. "GIR is running on full defensive mode. That's why he's taking you upstairs. You are gonna die if you don't eat something"
Zim didn't scowl like he normally would have. Instead, he just looked sad. All the way to the elevator, he didn't say a word. Dib and GIR let go of his arms. He stood, for a moment, but then overbalanced when the elevator started up. Dib caught him before he hit the floor. Zim gave him a look of gratitude, but didn't say anything. Dib understood. Something had obviously happened to the little Irken. When you were as deeply submersed in the sea of denial as Zim was, it took something really huge to get through to you. (Megadoomer, cough, cough)
The elevator stopped, and the refrigerator opened again. Dib ducked. The fridge wasn't tall enough, a fact he hadn't noticed going down. Dib had grown since 6th grade. He was now about 5'9. Zim had grown too, surprisingly. He had come up to 5'2. That was 4 inches taller than the Irken average.
The three of them stepped out into the green room. Zim seriously considered telling the computer to kick Dib out, but deep down, he knew Dib wanted to help. Right now, at least. He stumbled over to the real fridge, which was concealed in a wall.
He took out an Irken Lick-em-stick. On an afterthought, he threw one of GIR's sodas at Dib.Dib caught it, and popped it open. Zim walked over to the couch. No longer did he need his spider legs to get on it. He sat on the far left side. Dib sat on the far right. He didn't feel quite right in this room. All the other times, he had been on his guard. Hanging from the ceiling with cameras silently recording. But this time, he just watched the green boy eat his Irken food, and wondered.
It wasn't that he didn't have a camera. No, ever since finding the colony of Rat people in the parking garage, he carried a video camera and a regular camera with him at all times, in a backpack. That little trick he had picked up from Zim. Zim had everything a person could want in that bio-mechanical pak.
"Umm…You haven't been up to any evil in a while… I got concerned. Are you gonna tell me your plan?"
"No, Dib- Monkey. There is no plan. And there never will be again."
"Are you going back to your home planet? Don't you want Earth?"
"No. I'm not going back to Irk. They won't let me. The Tallest never wanted Earth. They just wanted to get rid of me."
'Wow. Waitaminit. You're planet's name is Irk? That's funny." Zim looked at him balefully. Dib blushed.
"Um. I guess it means something different in your language. Probably not what it means in our language."
"What it mans in our language can't even be translated into your language. It means…" Zim stared at the ceiling. "Inkr temor outhe kemouure temeto haslemg treia. Yrti ourpn grate. Nyish." He smiled sadly. "I'm forgetting. I can't remember my pod on Irk anymore. It's only been four years since I was there. I should still remember"
Dib frowned. Zim said his memories were all in his pak. He shouldn't forget unless his pak was gone. Or malfunctioning.
Could paks malfunction?
"Aren't all your memories in your pak? It's not broken is it?" Zim gave him a look.
"No. Irken technology does not 'break.' It's being erased. The Tallest are erasing it."
"How? Can't you stop it?"
"It's being reabsorbed by control brains. They access it through a remote link. I can't remove the link without losing all communications with Irk"
"So you'd rather DIE than lose contact with the people who abandoned you?" Zim's face contorted with rage.
"How would you know? All I've wanted all my life was to be an Invader! It was programmed into my pak before I was even brought to life! And now I find out that my whole life has been a joke! My mission only continued because The Tallest found by struggles amusing! Even GIR! I believed for three years that he was advanced, because that's what they told me. When I finally looked closely, when I pushed away all my chips, the things I had added, he only worked because two loose wired randomly crossed. If they hadn't been touching, he would have just been a pile of spare robot parts. They weren't even up-to-date parts. They were broken prototypes." Dib nodded.
"Harsh. But really, Zim. There's other stuff to life besides destroying planets. Why don't you just stay on Earth because it's nice here? You don't have to hate us anymore; we're not your targets."
"That is correct." Said the Computer. "Why don't you try it, Zim?"
"Because I don't want to!"
"That's kinda too bad, cuz I just accidentally disrupted all communications lines and the control room has imploded. That's your fault, Mr. Destructive Rage."
"ARRRGH! This is a conspiracy, I know it. This is all your fault, Dib." Dib shrugged. At least Zim had the same reasoning. "I hate doing this, Zim, but you really need it. Wanna come…" Dib gulped. 'This could be a trap!' said a tinny voice in his head. He ignored it.
"Wanna come to my house and do something? We could watch a movie or something."
Zim considered for a moment. Deep-ingrained hate for Dib versus the need to do something, anything, with another person.
"I have nothing else to do at the moment. My base is repairing it's self. So I will take you up on that. Out of sheer boredom." Dib knew a bluff when he saw it. Zim needed someone to talk to. He pictured three years on a strange planet,
hating everyone around you. It wasn't good.
Zim stood shakily up. He was already almost OK. Irken Lik-em-sticks are really healthy. Plus, Irkens heal really fast. So Zim was getting better while they spoke.
"What movies do you have?"
"Intestines of War…"
"Oh, God no. Ohhh, the memories that movie left me with…"
Ok…I'm not even gonna ask." They made their way over to Dib's house. Gaz sat on the couch, playing her Gameslave 8.734. She looked up for a millisecond when Dib came in. She did a double-take.
"Holy COW! Dib! You let Zim in our house! WOW! Zim, I got nothing against you, but what did you do to Dib?"
"I have done nothing. This is all Dib's fault."
"Yeah, Gaz. I invited him. I think we've been enemies too long." Zim was grateful that he didn't say anything about the Tallest.
"Ok…If the old Dib surfaces anytime soon, call me. I wanna watch you fight. It's usually really funny."
"Whatever." said Zim. The two boys walked up the stairs to Dib's room. Gaz smiled a little. Zim was gonna be in her house now. That's cool. She unpaused her game, and resumed her pig massacring.
Yay! I just added ALL the punctuation on this thing cuz it didn't upload! So you all OWE ME!!