By animeninjaNIPPON
"Let go of me, DIB-MONKEY!" Zim yelled as Dib dragged him up the stairs.
"Be quiet!" Dib hissed. "Do you want Tak to hear us?"
That shut Zim up – for about two minutes. When they reached the ground-level floor, everything was pitch black, and the alien complained again.
"You IDIOT!" Zim screeched. "You unplugged the MAIN POWER SOURCE, didn't you?"
"How should I know? Besides, we can still get out, right?"
"ALL of the doors in here are powered by ELECTRICITY!"
"Oh." That would set them back…
"NONE OF THIS would have HAPPENED if YOU hadn't existed!"
"If I hadn't existed, YOU would still be a slave on some fast-food planet!" Dib pinned Zim to the wall by his shoulders. "And no one would care about you at all! I'm the only being in this entire universe who cares about you even a little!"
The human had no time to realize what slipped out of his mouth before an Irken hand came crashing across his face. "NO MORE OF YOUR LIES!"
"What was that for?" Dib put both hands to his injured cheek.
"Why must you RUIN EVERY future that you exist in?"
"What do you mean? It was your idea to come back. You didn't have to steal Tak's mission – you could have found some other planet to take over to please your leaders. At least half of this is your doing!"
Zim completely lost it. "YOU RUINED MY MISSION, YOU – " He screamed something in his native language " – So I came to get REVENGE ON YOU!"
Dib, lowering one hand from his face, spoke calmly for the sake of differentiation. "You never had a mission. And it's not my fault either way – it's fate. No matter what happens to us in the time-space continuum, we'll always end up crossing paths. Maybe we were enemies once, but we can be allies this time."
"Why would I want you as an ally?"
"Because you don't want me as your enemy." There was a hint of a threat in Dib's voice. "And if we're only going to end up enemies anyway, we might as well be friends until we fix the past back to the way it originally was."
"Never!" was on the tip of Zim's tongue, but his hand was still stinging from when he slapped Dib, which made him see that there was no point in fighting. "Fine. We can be 'friends' or whatever you said for now."
Friends? Dib had meant to say "allies," but "friendship" wasn't all that bad. He sighed and swallowed his anger. "I'm sorry I ruined your life or whatever. It's not like I meant to or anything."
"Eh, that's not important."
"Huh?" Zim's abrupt mood changes were beginning to freak Dib out.
"NEVER MIND!" Zim pulled his headlight hat out of his PAK and put it on.
"No, tell me," Dib pleaded. "You kept going on about it before."
"You're TRYING my patience again…"
"Sorry. I dunno why I'm talking so much – do I always talk this much?"
Zim took on a very Dib-like manner. "Well, it's not like I ever got to KNOW things about people – or HUMANS – and now I know YOU, and…it's different."
Dib was about to ask how it was different, but Zim continued. "This is why we Irkens don't socialize like this."
Suddenly, Dib understood the slap. "You've never had anyone care before, huh?"
"The Tallest care…enough to want me away."
"Don't you see, Zim?" cackled an all-too-familiar Irken voice. "The human loves you."
End of part sixteen