- Confrontation

It was Monday. The silence within Ms. Bitters classroom was complete and only the scribbling and snapping of pencil lead could be heard. The snakelike skoolteacher sat behind her desk, glaring at the children she presided over with the tips of her slender fingers pressed lightly together. Behind her loomed the dusty, green blackboard, which, for the moment, had written on it in crumbling white chalk the words "test today" in jagged, thick letters.

As everyone within the class struggled to complete their tests, Zim had already long ago finished his own and simply set the pen he had been using onto his desk. He then got to his feet and marched over to Ms. Bitters, setting his completed test down in front of the glaring skoolteacher. After that was done, the Irken cleared his throat and marched back to his desk, sitting down and folding his hands on its bluish-green surface, assuming an expression of pure innocence. Then, after a few minutes had passed, Zim glanced over at Dib and grinned toothily, waiting for the human boy to retaliate to this silent teasing. "Stupid stink boy," he thought to himself with a chuckle. "Look at the fool struggle with this hideous waste of time that dare be called a test! I've endured more difficult subject during smeethood!"

Dib was bent over his test with the end of his pencil tapping lightly against the side of his head. He would've finished the blasted thing ages ago if it wasn't for the fact that he had been busy watching the Mysterious Mysteries Marathon all weekend long. "I know this!" he growled through gritted teeth. "I just know I do." That was when Dib saw Zim, his greatest enemy and rival, simply get up from his seat and turn in his test before anyone else in the entire class. Dib shook his head from side to side. How could he be the only one to see the alien for what he really was? It was so painfully obvious, so plain! Every single time, Zim was the first to turn in anything, be it a quiz, or a test, or even class work for that matter. It just wasn't normal, or at least it wasn't normal in kid standards, but still, how could he, Dib, be the only one to realize all this? Then, he looked up from his paper once again, catching sight of the Irken as he grinned at him. He knew that grin. Zim was up to something and he was taking this extra time to rub it in Dib's face, or at least that's what he thought it meant. "Go ahead Zim," he thought to himself with a retaliating glare. "Keep on grinning. I'll get you one of these days! Then we'll see who'll be ginning all smug and stuff. You'll be gritting your teeth in pain behind three inches of soundproof glass, alien!" Dib was just about to get back to work on his test when he realized that it was no longer there. "What the?" he breathed in disbelief, looking under his desk to see if it had fallen there. "Where'd my test go?"

Ms. Bitters loomed before Dib with a roll of paper gripped tightly in her ancient hands, obviously the test the Human boy had lost. "Perhaps from now on, Dib, you will know better to keep you eyes focused on your own paper until it is finished," she hissed in her usual cold voice.

Dib blinked up at Ms. Bitters, eyes filled with hurt. "But Zim was teasing me," he breathed in his defense, now pointing in the direction of the Irken. "Just look at him! He's probably still at it."

Instead of doing what Dib was accusing him of doing, Zim had already managed to take out a blank sheet of paper and pretend to doodle on it as some form of entertainment, whistling a random tune softly to himself to add to the whole illusion of his innocence.

Dib frowned, his hurt soon turning into anger. "He's not doing it now, but he was," he continued, turning to look back at Ms. Bitters. "It's not my fault! It's Zim's! He should get the blame, not me."

Ms. Bitters only narrowed her eyes as the Human boy continued to push his point. "That's no excuse," she finished with a hiss, turning around and returning to her desk. As soon as she was seated once again, Ms. Bitters dropped Dib's unfinished test into a nearby flaming wastebasket, incinerating it in a matter of seconds.

Then, as Dib groaned in frustration and Zim snickered to himself at his rival's loss, a heavily built boy of taller than average height entered Ms. Bitters' silent classroom. He wore baggy back jeans with red and black sneakers and, around his waist, was strapped a beige satchel with varying pins and buttons attached to its outer flap. He also wore a longer than average red and black shirt with a black t-shirt pulled over it that had, embroidered onto the t-shirt's front, a red emblem of swirling flame. His hair was of medium length and looked like nothing more than an unkempt mess of spiky blackness. If his appearance wasn't already strange enough, the boy also sported a pair of red eyes that seemed to glare at everyone they happened to rest on, giving him an aura of hostility that hinted at his anti-social preference.

Dib looked up at the new boy and caught his breath, eyes going out of focus from utter shock. He stood on his seat and pointed at the newcomer with intense effort, making all sorts of strange and incomprehensible noises.

Zim raised an eyebrow at Dib as he watched the Human point madly in the direction of the doorway. Curious, Zim turned and uttered a strangled hiss of surprise, jumping slightly in his seat. "But that's not possible!" he thought to himself with a stupefied blink of disbelief, soon narrowing his eyes at the heavily built boy in pure suspicion and loathing.

The boy shot a deathly hostile glare at both Zim and Dib before he stuffed his gloved hands into his jeans' pockets and stalked over to Ms. Bitters' desk, pulling a crumpled note from his back pocket and presenting it to the snakelike skoolteacher without a word. He didn't care if the majority of the class was staring at him. He didn't even care if the green-skinned boy at the front of the first row even knew who he was. All he really cared about was to get this done and over with and to avoid talking to as many people as possibly manageable.

Ms. Bitters read over the piece of paper with lightning fast speed and nodded to the strange boy before her, motioning for him to claim the desk at the back of the first row. "Class, I expect you all to greet the newest unfortunate soul to join your collective stupidity," she breathed in a level and unfeeling tone. "Xir."

The boy then turned and began to stalk towards his newly assigned seat, looking as sullen and intimidating as ever. But it wasn't this that had caused Dib to leap from his seat in surprise or Zim's pupils to shrink in disbelief. No, it wasn't his clothes or even his uniquely colored eyes that drew all of this attention from the class, it was one thing more obvious than anything he was wearing. All of this attention, all of this interest, resulted because, like Zim, his skin was anything but the norm. His skin was green.

Zim turned in his seat as the new boy passed him, glaring all the while. "What is he doing here?" he hissed with intense contempt. "The name sounds oddly familiar, but I can't quite place where I heard it before. Anyways, that's beside to point! He's probably after my precious mission, no doubt. If that's the case, I'll just get rid of him just as I got rid of the last thieving fool that tried. No one will get their claws on Zim's mission! Not even this hulking giant of a thing named Xir." Zim nodded to himself in a determined way, putting his mind to speaking with the disguised Irken as soon as he got the chance to.

The other Irken soon reached his seat and threw himself into it rather roughly, tossing his satchel to the floor beside him and sinking down into his seat. He then crossed his arms and fell into what could only be his own dark thoughts, his crimson eyes swimming with a strange and unusual darkness.

Dib only continued to point and motion towards the sullen boy as he sat down, desperately trying to draw some recognition unto himself. "He's Irken! Like Zim, like the same!" his brain shrieked as he glanced to Zim, seeing him nod lightly as he too watched the newcomer. "He's in alliance with him! I knew it! I knew Zim was up to something evil! Now he has somebody else to help overtake the Earth and…" Dib paused his thinking, a new idea forming in his mind. "Wait! Maybe there's still hope," he thought to himself with a pondering frown."This Xir person glared at me, but he also glared at Zim. Maybe they're not allies at all, but enemies, only Zim thinks he can convince him to help him destroy the Earth. That's it! There is hope! I just need to talk to Xir before Zim does, then everything will be fine and I'll have once again stopped Zim at whatever plan he's planning!" Dib grinned in something of a zealous way, imagining the look of Zim's face when he saw the Human boy defeat him once again.

Just then, as Dib pictured his victory and Zim thought out how to approach the obviously hostile Irken, the recess bell sounded and Ms. Bitters glared throughout the classroom of staring students. "Turn in your tests and go away!" she hissed in a cold and dark tone, pointing to the classroom door with a single outstretched arm and claw-like finger.

At this, Xir slowly sat up in his seat and got up, stuffing his hands into his pockets and hunching his shoulders some as he shuffled out of the classroom and into the skool hall. Once again ignoring any stares he received.

While the sullen Irken left, the children then did as the snakelike skoolteacher commanded them, rising from their seats to go turn in their tests, finished or incomplete, before filing out of the classroom and into the hallway crowded with students hurrying to go play outside on the mediocre playground equipment.

-:-

Being one of the first to leave the classroom and venture outside of the skool building, Xir now sat on a desolate bench not to far from the barbed wire-topped fence. In his hands was a paperback book of decent size with the words "Curse of the Were: Bloodlust" printed in red, oozing letters on the front, as well as the spine. Slowly, the sullen Irken silently read along at an average rate of speed, turning a page every minute or so. By the way he loomed over the book, it seemed that had finally found something that could take his mind off of everything for a while, even his own shadowed thoughts. "I never expected that…" he thought to himself with a morbid hiss of a chuckle, referring to a certain turn of events in the book's storyline. Then, just when Xir thought that he might actually be left alone and in peace for the day, he noticed that someone was now standing right before him. Eyes darkening some, he raised his eyes from his book to tell whoever this was to leave him alone, but instead of seeing who he had expected, Xir met eyes with a Human boy with black hair and large, round glasses.

Dib looked the Irken over with narrowed eyes, trying to look intimidating, but failing miserably. "You're name's Xir, right?" he asked with a frown, obviously very suspicious.

Xir blinked at the Human boy and glared, turning his eyes back to the pages of his book. "Yeah…" he breathed in a low and unfeeling tone, turning the page and reading on.

Dib flinched slightly as the Irken shot him a piercing glare, but continued on with his questioning, convincing himself that this was for the good of all mankind. "I know what you are," he finally managed to say after at least a minute of utter silence. "You're Irken, like Zim. You can't fool me anymore than he can! I can see right through that disguise of yours no matter how much you think it protects you!" By now, Dib had his fists clenched and was gritting his teeth with effort, determined to get at the Irken's reason for being here.

At first, Xir simply ignored him as he ignored everything else that he didn't care to know or hear, but, as Dib's words drew to an end, the sullen Irken gently shut his book and set it down beside him on the bench. He then raised his crimson eyes to meet the large-headed boy's and blinked in an uncaring way. "What're you gonna do if I don't care…?" he asked in a low and hostile voice, his patience growing somewhat thin.

Dib blinked at this, not quite knowing how to react to the question. If he had went up to Zim and said all of that, the paranoid Irken would've come up with some sort of witty response to convince anyone that happened to be watching that he was as normal as they. "He doesn't care if I know he's Irken?" he asked himself in confusion. "That means he's admitting to it, doesn't it? But why on Earth would he do that? Does he want to be discovered? Or…" Dib smiled in the back of his mind as a certain thought arose within his brain, wondering if what he was thinking was true. "Only one way to find out," he assured himself, taking in a deep breath of air and gathering up his courage. "So, you really don't care that I know? Not even a little?" Dib raised an eyebrow as he said this, standing his ground before the aggravated Irken.

Xir blinked and slowly shook his head from side to side in reply, continuing to keep eye contact with the Human boy as he stood before him.

Dib hesitated and glanced to the side, but still continued. "Then," he began in an unsure tone, returning his gaze to the Irken. "What're you doing here? Did you crash here on accident or something? Or…"

Instead of waiting for Dib to state the obvious other, Xir drew in breath and decided to interrupt him. "Look…" he began in a dark and level tone. "I'm not here to blow up your planet or any shit like that, all right… I crashed here a couple of days ago, but not on accident…" Xir paused, not much the type to explain, or even talk. "And for Zim or whatever it is that you call him…" he continued in a much lower tone. "I've got nothing to do with it… I came here to get away from something I hated… that's all… And if you got a problem with it, you can go ahead and screw yourself… for all I care…" With that, Xir fell silent and hunched over his shoulders, obviously not wanting to say any more.

Dib could only stand there as he listened to Xir explain, nodding when it all came to an end. "So, you crashed two days ago, huh," he breathed in a level tone, having had more of his share of experience with hostile people. Sadly, the majority of that experience came from his dealings with his very own little sister, Gaz. "It was on the news, you know. Everybody said it was a freak biplane crash, but I thought it was something else. Probably another one of Zim's plans or something like that."

As Dib spoke, Xir finally turned his gaze downwards, shifting on the bench somewhat uneasily from all of this conversation. "Why doesn't he just go away?" he asked himself in an unsure way. "I told him what he wanted to know… I even explained all of it… What more does he want from me…?" Xir frowned at this confusion, wishing it would just leave him alone and let him get on with his dismal existence.

Dib saw the way the Irken looked away, also noticing the way he shifted on the bench. As far as he could tell, Xir seemed as anti-social as Gaz, if not by a heck of a lot more. But instead of telling him to shut up or go away, the Irken just sat there and took it. "He's probably just ignoring me," he concluded silently, frowning some. "Maybe I should just leave? Either that or change the subject." Dib nodded at this, softly clearing his throat and continuing with his effort to hold a conversation with Xir. "Anyways, I didn't watch anything on it because Mysterious Mysteries was on all weekend long," he breathed with a certain adoration in his voice, suggesting how much he cared for the show. "It's about paranormal stuff like aliens and monsters and other unsolved mysteries we have here on Earth. Sometimes their content really sucks, but most of the time it's pretty good. I want to be a paranormal investigator someday, you know."

Xir blinked as Dib's words snapped him out of his thoughts, soon lifting his eyes back to the Human boy. "Did you say Mysterious Mysteries…?" he asked in a low, but slightly less hostile tone. "Like the show?"

Dib was about to continue his talking when he heard Xir's questions and nodded in reply to them, fixing the Irken with a somewhat puzzled expression. "Yeah, I did," he breathed with a twitch of a smile, not knowing if Xir's questioning was a good thing or not.

A weak smile managed to snake across the sullen Irken's face as he recalled the countless episodes he had watched while he set up his primitive base, remembering how much they had interested him and, on some rare occasions, made him hiss with laughter. "I watched a whole bunch or those not too long ago…" he breathed in what now seemed to be a truly affable tone, or at least as affable as could come from the usually gloomy Irken. "I liked the one with the chupacabra or whatever it was called… It made me laugh…"

Dib couldn't believe what he was hearing. Here he was, standing in front of an alien in disguise, listening to someone else talk about Mysterious Mysteries. As far as he knew, he was the only one in the whole skool that actually liked the show. "It… it did…?" he managed to stammer, his face lighting up with pure joy. "Wow, you watch Mysterious Mysteries! I was starting to think that I was the only one! This is great! Did you see the one on werewolves? I could so tell it's a guy in a wolf costume! Couldn't you?" Without waiting for a reaction from the Irken, Dib only continued to rant on various episodes and their flaws and certainties.

Xir nodded in reply, smiling a little more so at Dib's childish bliss and zeal. "I believe in werewolves…" he managed to breathe over Dib's continued babbling. "I'm reading a really good book on lycanthropy and stuff… It's called 'Curse of the Were: Bloodlust' and it's about some guy that doesn't believe in werewolves that goes to England and gets bitten when he's wandering around a campsite… It's really gory and pretty accurate… well… in med terms anyways…"

Then, just as Dib was to utter his reply to Xir, he was suddenly rammed out of the way and into a nearby garbage can by none other that his loathed rival, Zim. As soon as he heard the Human boy cry out in pain and surprise, the short Irken straightened himself and turned to face the other darker-skinned, much larger, as well as taller, one. "Greetings," he breathed in something of a cynical tone. "You're name is Xir, isn't it? Well, anywho, I was just wondering what brought you to this skool, or rather, this planet." As Zim said this, he narrowed his eyes, regarding Xir with nothing but pure skepticism and revulsion.

Xir's eyes widened slightly as Dib was rocketed out of his frame of vision, but, as Zim invaded it, they quickly narrowed into a sinister glare. He listened to Zim's wry words and grinded his teeth together in utter annoyance and hatred. "Go away…" he breathed with a hiss, scooping up his book from the bench and roughly shoving it under his left forearm as he got to his feet and glowered at the small Irken, who was about half-a-foot shorter than himself and much scrawnier.

Zim only raised an eyebrow at Xir's hostility, interpreting it as some sort of effort to hide the truth, or at least what he assumed to be the truth, from him. "No, I don't think I will," he breathed in a horribly stubborn way, crossing his arms and standing his ground. "At least not until you tell me why you're here, Irken. As I'm sure you're aware, this planet is assigned to me and it will me alone that will be responsible for it's utter annihilation. And your coming here will only be a thorn in my side, so I suggest you leave before you anger me further!" As Zim said this, he had uncrossed his arms and now had them clenched at his sides in fists.

A thick and heavy silence hung in the air as Xir continued to look down at Zim, his eyes swimming with a strange darkness and his mouth set into a straight line, frowning at the corners. "I said go away…" he hissed darkly, the crimson of his eyes deepening to a dark shade of red.

Zim, ignorant as ever, only continued to press his accusations, now taking them a bit further. "I heard you perfectly well," he hissed in his defense, magenta eyes narrowed and glaring. "But did you happen to hear and comprehend my words through all of that filthy hair? By the indifference of your face, I assume you didn't. What are you doing here? You're after my mission, aren't you? I knew it! Tak was the first, but I should've known that there'd be others. All of you with an eye for Zim's precious mission!"

Xir's left eye twitched as Zim spoke, on the verge of losing whatever was left of his patience. "I'm not after your freaking mission, you moron!" he yelled in reply, dropping his book in the dirtand hunching over his shoulders. "And I don't care what you have to say to me either, so just get up and leave me alone already!" With that, Xir took a single step forward and shoved Zim away from him with such force that it could've easily knocked the small Irken to the ground if it wouldn't have been for Zim's impressive balance.

Zim winced as he was shoved back by the heavily built Xir, his teeth gritted together in a sneer of contempt. "You're just jealous!" he boomed in return, already taking a few steps towards Xir and pointing at him accusingly. "Jealous that the Tallest like me more! Jealous that I have a secret mission and you don't! And to think that you call yourself Irken? You're nothing but a thieving defective! Feeding off of the accomplishments of others and claiming them to be your own! You make me sick!"

Xir's eyes flooded with darkness as Zim continued to babble about jealousy and missions. By the end of the rant, the glaring Irken could take no more and snapped, ramming Zim back with a single arm. "Jealous…" he hissed in a deathly aggressive manner. "Jealous! Why the hell would I be jealous of you?" Xir took another step forward and shoved Zim even further, this time almost knocking him right downto the rigid asphalt of the playground. "At least I know when to back off!" he continued, his violent yelling echoing across the featureless playground. "Defective? Yeah, sure call me that if you want! Still doesn't change the fact that they died… They called me defective too… but I showed them, didn't I…? Didn't I?" By this time, all the red had left Xir's furious pupils and was replaced by a blackness so pitch that not even the light managed to glimmer on their sinister surface. He shoved Zim once again, this time with both of his powerful arms, finally succeeding in knocking the diminutive Irken to the ground.

Zim uttered a strangled yelp of surprise as he felt himself fall backwards onto the asphalt below, skidding some from the frightening strength of Xir's shove. He winced from the repeated assaults and then looked up at the enraged Irken's eyes, specifically his pupils, his own shrinking in shock and uncertainty at the sight of their bizarre appearance.

Xir continued to stalk towards Zim, a certain morbid insanity shining in his horribly malicious eyes. "Oh, how I made them pay…" he hissed with dark satisfaction. "You know the stories, don't you… Irken… About me… about them…? How they… died…" By now, the defective Irken loomed over Zim as he lay paralyzed on the gravel before him. "How I… Xir… killed them…"

As Xir continued with his insane mutterings, Zim's eyes grew wide. Now he knew where he had recognized that name from. During his banishment on Foodcourtia, he recalled horrible news reports about countless killings on Irk that left the victims in the most gory and unrecognizable of states. Their paks were crushed and punctured by some sort of vicious blade and their flesh was torn from their very bones, all resting in a thick pool of purple blood. Even their faces had been ravaged and hacked away to the point that the Irk authorities were certain the killings were the work of some ill-landing Xzechnar. Ever since those reports, Zim had never again regained his stomach for blood and gore. The images were just too horrible to be believed and, when enough data had been gathered, it was simply mind-boggling to accept that the killings weren't the work of some beastly race, but of another Irken. Zim gulped, now struggling to back away from Xir as fast as he possibly could. "You… you're that Xir, aren't you?" he managed to exclaim in something of a strangled way. "Aren't you?"

Xir only took another, more threatening step towards Zim in reply and loomed over him once again, a broad grin of pure morbid insanity creeping across his face. He then bent forward and leaned close to Zim, his eyes narrowed. A foreboding silence soon smothered the air once again, causing Zim's already panicked expression to intensify. Xir then uttered a hissing chuckle and cocked his head at the scrawny Irken, that horrid grin still spread across his face. "Run…" he hissed in a low whisper that only Zim could hear, using the single word as a signal, a signal that, for Zim, meant that the end was now.

Zim held his breath and bit onto his lower lip as the silence came, pupils shrinking in utter terror. Then, came that hiss of a word and, without a moment's hesitation, the terrified Irken scrambled to his feet and ran from the looming Xir, running as fast as his legs could possibly carry him.

Xir rushed after Zim, catching up to him in mere seconds. The murderous Irken then withdrew a single spider-leg from his pak and shot it forward in an attempt to trip Zim up as he fled. Like his pak, Xir's spider-legs were also red and black, but, unlike the standard sort that every other Irken was equipped with, each of his ended in a hideously sharp blade that was capable of slicing through any flesh or hide, no matter the race.

Luckily for Zim, he had managed to spot the mechanical appendage as it surged forward with blinding speed. He jumped as the blade rushed towards his knees, narrowly avoiding it by mere millimeters. Zim panted as he felt himself rapidly losing energy, closing his eyes for a brief second or two. That was when he felt a searing pain erupt from just below his knee, causing him to cry out and to lose his footing as he ran. Next thing he knew, he was skidding across the rough asphalt of the playground. As he came to a grinding halt, Zim struggled to get to his feet, but soon discovered that whenever he moved his legs, pain pulsated throughout his body.

Having tripped up his quarry, Xir stalked towards Zim with his shoulders hunched over threateningly and his fists clenched at his sides. Within a few moments, he was upon the bleeding Irken and was looming over him once again. Then, before Zim could so much as utter a strangled cry for help, Xir leaned forward and took hold of the front of the Irken's uniform with a single powerful hand and lifted him up from the ground so that Zim's legs dangled uselessly in the air.

It was at this exact moment that Dib managed to free himself of the trashcan and finally catch a glimpse of what all the yelling and commotion had been about. He saw the scene before him and blinked in stunned disbelief. Then, not having seen enough to know exactly was going on, Dib simply got to his feet and brushed himself off, taking a few tentative steps towards the two Irkens.

As Dib approached, Zim struggled to pry Xir's iron grip from his uniform's collar, wincing as he felt the Irken's hold increase to the point of actually beginning to choke him. His prying soon turned to clawing as he slowly felt himself begin to gasp for air.

Xir smirked as he watched Zim struggle, taking sinister pleasure in watching the undersized Irken start to suffocate. Then, having decided that he had had his fill of simply watching the Irken's suffering, Xir drew back his free hand and, after balling it into a fist, sent it rocketing forward to connect with Zim's face, releasing his hold on his collar and allowing Zim to fall to the ground once again. After listening to Zim's groan of pain, the thickset Irken then slammed his left foot down onto the upper part of the Irken's pathetically thin right arm mercilessly, shifting all on his weight onto it.

Within second, Zim cried out in pain as he felt the bone in his arm begin to compress under the increasing pressure of Xir's weight. Little did he know that this wasn't even the beginning of the torture he would be forced to endure, for, soon after, he felt Xir wrap a single powerful hand around his right wrist and pull back with such force Zim couldn't help but scream out in pain. "Please!" he cried forth with tears streaming down from his closed eyes. "Please, Xir! I beg of you! Not my arm!" Then, as the strain spiked, the sickening crack and breaking bone sounded, soon followed by yet another horrifying shriek of pain.

Dib couldn't help but cringe as he heard Zim beg Xir to stop, jumping a bit when he too heard the Irken's upper arm snap. "This isn't right," he thought to himself with a frown, watching as Xir continued to twist and jerk Zim's right arm in the opposite direction of the norm. "Sure, Zim wants to destroy all humanity, but does he really deserve this?"

Then came a second echo of shattering bone as Xir stomped on Zim's elbow and twisted his forearm three-hundred and sixty degrees on its axis, thus causing the Irken's arm to break in yet another place. This fracture was also accompanied by Zim's desperate pleas for relent, as well as his bawling sobs of pain. "Stop! Stop!" he yelled through his cries, struggling to squirm his way free of the immense weight of the heavy Irken. "Please! Please, no more! No, no, no!" Then came a third snap, followed by another high-pitched bawl of pure torture.

Dib watched the scene play out before him with uncertainty. Why wasn't anyone doing anything to stop this from continuing? Surely someone had heard Zim as he screamed and begged Xir to stop. Then why wasn't somebody doing something to stop this torture from going on and on? Then, the Human boy searched the playground, soon understanding why nothing had been done to stop the fight. Recess had ended long ago, but the struggle had continued. No one had seen the confrontation break out between the two Irkens. No one had heard the Zim cry out as his arm was shattered in three places. No, no one heard anything at all. Dib then turned his attention back to the Xir and Zim, frowning in an almost sympathetic way as he watched the previous continue to torment the latter.

As Dib looked on, Xir had already released Zim's wrist and allowed his dreadfully fractured arm to crumple at the Irken's side, useless and bleeding profusely from the areas where the splintered bone had broken the skin. Then, his black eyes narrowed with severe hatred as the thickset Irken kicked Zim hard in the side, causing him to roll over onto his back, lying utterly motionless except for the occasional feeble blink or twitch. "Death…" he hissed in a low and ominous tone. "It comes in so many forms… more than you can count… Irken…" Xir then placed his right foot right on top Zim's sternum and began to shift all of his weight onto it, taking cruel pleasure in watching the Irken's chest strive to rise against the growing pressure. "And guess what…" he added with a sardonic grin as he withdrew his blade-tipped spider-legs from his pak and nicked Zim under his left eye with the vicious tip of one. "You get to be a part of it…" With that, Xir lifted his foot from Zim's chest and into the air, preparing to bring it smashing down onto the undersized Irken's ribcage.

Zim winced as he prepared for then end. He was shattered and battered to the point that his tortured body had gone numb with the intense pain that had incessantly wracked it. Then, as he thought over the things he had done in his life, Zim's eyes began to close and he felt himself drifting in and out of conscious. No doubt an effect of the blood loss and suffering he had to endure. Then, within moments, Zim gave in to the weakness and allowed himself be swallowed up into the darkness, blacking out.

Then, as Zim fell unconscious and Xir had begun to bring his foot plunging down towards the his chest, two arms took hold of the thickset Irken from beneath his shoulders and pulled back, stopping his crushing stomp midway. Xir struggled to throw off this bothersome hindrance, but failed in every way. "Get off of me!" he hissed in fuming rage, twisting from here to there in an attempt to rid himself of this unwanted restraint.

Dib held onto Xir with all his might, eyes squinted shut with the effort to hang on and divert, if not stop, the bloodthirsty Irken from delivering the final blow to the now unconscious Zim. "Stop Xir!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, narrowly avoiding getting himself nearly impaled by one of Xir's flailing spider-legs. "Stop! Not even Zim deserves this! Get a hold of yourself, Xir! Zim's out of it, you've won!"

The enraged Xir blinked, recognizing Dib's voice through his blind need to destroy. "Dib…?" his mind echoed over the need to quench his thirst for ruin. Suddenly, the pitch-blackness faded from the Irken's eyes and was rapidly replaced by a very pale shade of red. Within the next moment or two, Xir's body went slack and he collapsed to the gravel below, out cold.

Dib could only stare as he watched Xir collapse, not at all sure of what had just happened. He then allowed his gaze to drift to Zim and frowned deeply, noting the state the scrawny Irken was in. He was lying in a small pool of his own blood and was scarcely breathing, his right arm twisted in unnatural angles with bone poking out wherever the arm had fractured. Dib cleared his throat as an uneasy silence surrounded him, gazing back and forth in between Xir and Zim. "Who would've ever thought so much could happen while you're stuck in a trashcan," he commented to himself as he scratched at the back of his head, trying to figure what to do next. Dib looked to Zim and winced as he looked over his condition once again. "I guess he kind of needs my help more than Xir, even though he did bring this down on himself in every way possible," he thought to himself his a grimace. The consideration of helping the single individual he hated more than anything else in the world made Dib's stomach churn with loathing. "No matter how much I hate him, it's still not right to just leave him here. I could help Xir instead, but, other that being unconscious and stuff, he's nowhere near as bad as Zim is right now." Then, after letting loose a long sigh, the Human boy stepped over to the cataleptic Zim and kneeled down next to him, lifting his limp and battered body up from the purple-tinged asphalt and, very slowly, managing to drag him away in the direction of the rear gate and away from the skool.