A/n: I apologies for the gigantic delay on updating this, but things have been super busy with finals and my mom came in from out of town and my birthday (hooray for legal drinkage), and my computer acting wonky (it had a cold, ala Trojan virus…evil), etc. No, I haven't forgotten about this. Sorry sorry sorry….

Ps—I wonder if I pissed anyone off with my little rant in the last chapter, considering there was a great lackage in reviews (aside from my email from Dibsthe1, which, I wrote you back, but my internet shut down right after I sent it—the evils of wireless—so I couldn't tell if it got through or not. If it didn't, sorry, I wasn't ignoring it…). If I offended anyone, I apologize. (shruggy). Or maybe the last chapter just sucked. Ah well.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own IZ, I don't own IZ, I don't own IZ, I don't own….

PART EIGHT

"You're kidding, right?" Gaz demanded. We were sitting in our father's kitchen, drinking coffee like two normal, civil family members. To look at the scene one would never be able to tell that I had just told my sister that our closest friend was about to take over the world for an emotional 30 pieces of silver.

"I wish I were." I sighed and ran my hand though my hair. This was not a conversation I wanted to have. Not with Gaz. She and Zim had become…close over the years. He was the one to pull her out of her shell. He was the one who taught her, with his inability to understand human culture, how to accept herself and others. She trusted him. He was the extra family member she had needed while growing up. He was the one she had gone to when she got her first period (she claimed that it was to "help him understand more about human biology" while years later when going through Gir's memory disks I discovered it was because she was too uncomfortable speaking to me or Dad. Guess males of other species don't count when it comes to embarrassing female bodily functions. Or something). He had been her date to prom after her "boyfriend" at the time had blown her off for a cheerleader. (The kid later found a liver bomb on his front porch—courtesy of Gir. Where he found the liver I never did want to know, though knowing the robot, it probably came out of the never ending recessed of his head). They understood each other. They needed each other in a way that I would never be able to understand. And here I was telling her that her best friend would now rather kill her than look at her. I feel like dirt.

Gaz's voice was emotionless, as always, but her pain and anger showed in her eyes and hands as she gripped her coffee cup to the point where I thought I heard the porcelain creak. "You're lying. There's no way that Zim would go back to those assholes. Not after the way they treated him. This is a joke. Late April fools. Ha-ha, Dib, it's not funny."

I was growing weary of this. "I'm not lying to you, Gaz. I'm just telling you what he told me. He came over to my apartment, informed me that the Armada was on its way and that the truce is off. If he meets us again, he will kill us, unless we kill him, first. It's war, now, Gaz. I know you're upset, but—"

"NO!" She shouted, cutting me off. She slammed her hands on the table, standing with such force that her chair tipped over behind her. "You don't know, anything, Dib! You're wrong! There's no way, absolutely no way that—"

I was fed up. "What do you want me to say, Gaz? Huh?" I was standing now, as well, the volume of my voice rising to meet hers, "Do you want me to sugar coat it? Do you want me to tell you that everything's going to be ok? Do you want me to coddle you and hold your hand? Cos it's not going to help, Gaz, it just won't. You're 18 years old, damn it; it's time for you to realize that not everything is going to go your way! Our mother killed herself, our father doesn't love us, and Zim is the bad guy. Just fuckin' accept it, already!"

In the back of my mind, I was surprised at myself. I never raised my voice to Gaz. No matter how much emotional and physical abuse she had put me though over the years, I never fought back, never yelled. I had allowed her to take her frustrations out on me without a word, knowing that it was just because of her inability to cope with our mother's death, with our father's abandonment, with her own social inadequacies. Our entire lives I sat there and took it, no matter what the subject matter, no matter what the situation. It was the only way I could think of to protect her, the only way I could think of to keep her from falling into the abyss that had claimed the only other prominent female in my life. And here I now was, going against my own vows, my own determination that I would never be the one to hurt her. I guess after so many years a person can't just sit and take it anymore, either that or Zim's betrayal had affected me more than I originally thought.

Gaz's jaw was set, her mouth and angry bloodless line, her eyes boring into mine with such intense fire that, while she hadn't hit me out of anything but playfulness since I was 14, I was almost certain that she was about to knock my head off. However, at the key moment, her face just…cracked, crumpling in on itself like a deflating balloon, and she spun on her heels and ran out of the kitchen, away from me. I heard her boots on the stairs and the sound of her door slamming and I was left alone in the kitchen.

My father's voice drifted up from somewhere in the basement, shouting something about raising the dead, to which I mumbled an automatic apology that there was no way he could have heard, even if he were listening, and I righted the chair that Gaz had knocked over. I flopped into it, feeling like I weighed 500 pounds, and stared at her discarded coffee cup.

In a sudden moment of rage, I hurled it across the room, relishing in the sound as it shattered against the wall. I let my head fall against the table, not fully feeling the impact. 'I just don't fuckin' care, anymore,' I thought, 'I just don't fuckin' care.'

Some time later—it could have been minutes or hours, for all I knew—I sensed someone enter the kitchen. I raised my head from the table to meet Gaz's eyes in the doorway.

"I'm going over to Zim's, tomorrow. I'm going to talk some sense into him. He'll listen to me. You can come if you want. Make sure nothing happens—though I doubt anything will. I know he won't hurt me." The way her voice emphasized the "he" in her statement as her eyes bored into mine ripped my heart in half, but all I could do was nod.

Without another word, she turned and made her way back upstairs. I lay my head back on the table, trying to ignore the deep sense of foreboding that had crept over me. I closed my eyes, but sleep just wouldn't come. The gods were not that kind.

The next three days were full of the kind of organized chaos that made them seem to drag by at lightning speed. Gir was re-activated, much to Elizabeth's glee. The entire crew shared in an indulgent chuckle as the girl threw her arms around my neck in thanks before running off with the little droid to the computer room to install the new firewalls that she and Gretchen had coded before coming up with the best new plan off ascent.

Torque and Alex worked for a full 36 hours with their crew before finally perfecting the new weapons which were distributed to the appropriately trained infantry men and women, while the rest gathered and made bullets and oiled their handguns and rifles. By the second day everything metal that could be spared was melted down and put into the molds to be made into the new water-holding bullets that Alex had devised, which would mean instant death for any Irken hit, as the bullet would explode on contact, shedding water into their vital organs. The aliens could protect their outsides from their largest weakness, but not their insides.

Kala worked with the rest of the troops with basic moral issues while I made my way to each team checking their progress and working with Gretchen and Elizabeth on maps of the Irken base and the plan of attack. There was a sort of electric energy in the air, a pulse, as if my rag-tag army was a living, breathing creature, a predator. This energy made me feel a sort of primitive lust, and I found myself smiling with my teeth as I worked, a sound that was the mixture of a growl and a purr in my throat.

At the end of the third day, the troops met in the cafeteria for a final dinner. The other officers and I sat at one table, while the lower ranking solders sat in various places around the room. We had found a decent sized loot of unbroken bottles in the cellar of a dilapidated liquor store, and after the meal, rations of wine were given to the troops. I noticed that after all of the wine was poured, all of the eyes in the room were turned towards me. Kala nudged me a bit with her elbow and lifted her glass slightly, indicating that I should give a toast.

I rose slowly in my chair, my brow slightly furrowed, wondering what exactly I was to say, and as I stood there, grasping at words at they flowed through my mind, I heard the tink of metal on glass as saw Gir tapping the side of Elizabeth's glass, both of them grinning and giggling like idiots behind their hands. I rolled my eyes and gave them a little smile, and then opened my mouth to speak.

"I..I feel you all looking at me, as if you expect some words of wisdom---something great and quotable that will be put on a greeting card, or written in history books or on a statue or something along those lines, but…I can't seem to think of anything that meaningful. You have all been amazing soldiers and friends and family and I am honored to have gotten the chance to work and live with all of you."

Everyone was smiling, every mouth happy, while every eye was sad. They knew, just like I did, that most of the people in this room wouldn't be coming back, that tonight would be their last night. That this was their last glass of wine. These were the thoughts at the front of my mind, and my mouth longed to say them, while all of those eyes begged me not to.

"No matter what happens, tomorrow…" I felt that familiar lump rising in my throat, "just…make tonight count. Tonight let's celebrate the freedom that tomorrow we will win."

There was an uproarious round of shouts and applause from the troops as glasses were raised and wine was consumed. I sat back down and clinked my glass with my other officers, trying to keep the sadness out of my smile. Torque gave me a friendly pat on the back which almost launched me across the table and Alex offered me a kiss on the cheek. I knew that my small army was going to live tonight to its fullest. Tears would be shed, children would be fathered, stories would be shared, and then tomorrow, all would be for naught. All of their stories would come to an end, children would remain unborn, and the tears would be the only constant. I excused myself from the party and made my way back to my room for my coat. There was somewhere I needed to be.

A/n: Man, I want to write more here, but I can't seem to figure out how to make the transition clean enough, so I guess I'll just start o the next chapter. Yeah, I used the F-word a few times in here, and still have this a PG-13 rating, but if you're 13 and haven't heard that particular 4-letter word, you've been living in a box in an igloo in Antarctica. Or something.

I'm amused that I've reached 46 pages so far, making this the longest thing I've ever written. That makes me giggle. Maybe I'll hit a hundred, though I doubt it. I'm getting pretty close to the end, now. There are only two flashback parts that I want to do and then 5 main plot points that still need covered before the ending. So I figure about 4 or 5 more chapters before the conclusion...Though I'm not sure how I'm going to end this. As I'm sure I've said, before, this is based on a re-occurring dream I've been having for years, and the dram has two endings. I'm not sure which I'll go for, though I just might write out both for shits and giggles. Not sure. But yeah…reaching the climax, soon. Be excited.

As always, please r and r and I will do a little happy dance. To The Cure. Or something.