neoKOS-MOS: Sorry for the long wait. Life took over, as it does sometimes.

Downpour

He woke in the morning in his bed with only vague recollections of dragging himself there after the blood had stopped flowing into his arm. His eyes were heavy as he opened them, vision foggy and warm around the edges. Light poured in through the window, streaks of it blocked out by the brown smears of dried blood on the glass. He rolled over, ignoring the pain that ignited in his side, and faced away from the sunlight, the rays warm on his back. Maybe he was too warm. He couldn't tell. Nothing seemed to be real at the moment, and the whole waking had felt too much like a dream. And if it was, this was a good one. Warm, safe in bed. Nothing to disturb the peace.

Zim. The name came to mind, and his eyes snapped open again, taking in the fuzziness of the room with growing clarity. Lines seemed to straighten out, and his eye was caught by the pile of red-stained-blue on the floor. His shirt. Oh yeah.

He looked down over himself. His legs were twisted hopelessly in the blood spattered sheets. He reached down and picked at them, wincing at the pain it caused in both his arm and leg. A good minute of wrestling with the fabric got him free of it, and he sat up.

His head suddenly exploded in pain, and Dib groaned, leaning over and holding it between his hands, pressing hard on his temples with stiff fingertips. Red and black, colors seen at the rim of his vision as the stars blossomed in the middle. An aching scream in the depths of his hearing. It seemed to go on for ever, agonizingly crisp and clear in his mind. And then he felt it start to ebb, pull away from the corners of his mind and recede to where it had come from. He let out a breath.

Eyes opened, lifted again to survey the room. It was bright, lit from the window and nothing else. His legs felt wooden and numb. His hands were unnaturally cold, and something was dripping down his back. Dib pulled himself to his feet and staggered to the bathroom.

He leaned heavily on the sink, staring with hollow eyes at his reflection again. There was still blood and grime everywhere. His hair looked awful. He stared at the jagged wound in his shoulder. Gaz had done a good job of sewing it up, and he traced the stitches over with a careful finger, feeling the pain that simple motion produced.

He took a shower, a careful one. Got out and sat naked on the toilet as he made his fingers work. Wrap cuts and scrapes. Rub ointment into the worst of them. The whole bottle of peroxide was gone as he finished rewrapping the gauze on his shoulder. Then he got dressed and went to eat breakfast.

It was one thirty. The microwave beamed it at him from across the room. One thirty in the after noon. You missed work again, Dib.

"Shit," he muttered, not really caring as he pulled the milk out of the fridge. Not like it mattered. No matter how many jobs he lost, his dad always pulled the strings needed to get him another one.

Cereal. It wasn't like he was hungry, but the routine helped him think, and that was what he needed to do now. He didn't have class till six.

He chewed around a newly missing tooth, eyes dull and looking inward. Everything that had happened last night was a blur, the sum of everything going too fast and all the bloodloss. All he could be sure of was Zim. That the alien wasn't exactly right anymore, and it was unnerving. He had barely spoken, only muttering to himself as they fought, whisperings in Irken that Dib could only barely understand. And he was sure of it. As mind blowing as it was, he was sure that Zim had been crying, so angry and frustrated that he had been driven to tears.

It was all too unnerving. Dib dropped his spoon, a clink on the side of the bowl, cereal only half eaten. He looked out the window for a moment and got up. He couldn't stay here. Something was happening, and he could feel it. Even if it meant he got ripped to shreds again, he was going back to the alien's base and was going to make him talk. In English this time.

He pulled his other trench coat over his shoulders and shoved his keys and wallet into his pocket. The door closed with a click as he kicked it shut behind himself and walked off down the sidewalk. Overhead the sky was ugly green; tornado color. The clouds boiled in the high winds, streaking into long knives that raced along the zenith as if thrown. He kept his eyes on the pavement, occasionally glancing up to look around himself, make sure no one was following him. Not that that had happened for a while.

Wind ripped at his clothes as he got closer to the Irken's base, the hem of the coat blown tight around his legs. He glanced up long enough to take in the misshapen jungle gym of his old grammar school. It perched like an insect against the deathly green sky, one lonely black bird sitting on top. The creature watched him, eyes hard as diamonds as he passed by.

There really were no people out. The suburbs of the city were almost silent, but it was the wrong kind of silence. It seemed like a ghost town, and he started paying more attention to his surroundings. The wind howled through random oddly-shaped bits of housing. And that was it. No birds, no stray dogs prowling the street. No sick kids staring out the front window, making sure the freak dressed in black passed their house by.

"What did you do, Zim?" he whispered to the wind, boots slapping harder as he quickened his pace.

His eyes were cast toward the base even before he had turned the corner. And so his heart had turned over as soon as he stepped onto the sidewalk. It shouldn't have been different. In another world, it wouldn't have been. He had seen it a million times, that patch of ground between the two houses. But for the past eleven years it had been occupied, and now it was not.

He ran up to the plot, jumped clear over the sidewalk and landed on the flat ground. In the middle of it all there was a gaping black hole, heaps of dirt and broken concrete piled up around it so that he had to climb up vertically to actually see how deep the hole went. His hands grasped at pipes and twisted rebar as he pulled himself up, finally gaining purchase with his boots and pushing up to the top of the mound. He almost fell in. The wind ripped upward, out of the cavern and dispersed into the sky.

It was miles deep. He had always knew that the base went that far down, but Zim had just left it that way. Why had he done that? And the real question was, where was he now?

------

He had given up on going back home to get his car. It was too far, and the rain was looking to come down any minute. Back at the school yard, he glanced around before smashing the car window in with a hunk of concrete. He unlocked the door and pulled it open. No alarm. He searched through the normal spots that people hid keys. All empty. He swore under his breath and then pushed the seat back, ripping the dashboard open and crossing a few wires. It took him a few tries before the motor roared to life.

He pulled out of the parking lot and sped down the empty street at ninety miles an hour. Wherever Zim was, he was probably still in the city. And if it was as empty as the suburbs were, there was good reason to believe the Irken was the cause of all the emptiness.

The highway was barren, like it had been misplaced from a lonely desert road. He kicked the accelerator even more, the adrenaline rush of the speed making him tap nervous fingers on the steering wheel. He glanced out the side windows, looking for people, life. Anything.

"Shit, Zim. What the fuck did you do?" He hit the breaks, skidding to a stop as the real destruction began.

Buildings here toppled. Lengthwise across the street, broken concrete and twisted plumbing spilled out across the asphalt. He couldn't drive around that, and this was the fastest way into the center of the city. He sat at the wheel for a moment, fingers drumming the leather and eyes scanning the scene. Whatever. He killed the motor and got out of the car, boots crunching on white powdered plaster. He could smell fire, something burning somewhere with a hot, black smog that billowed up into the green sky. A crackle of lightning streaked dry across the clouds, and he turned up the collar of his trench coat as a drizzle began to fall. If it was going to rain, he was going to get wet.

Leaving the car behind, he crawled over the mess of building, the shattered carcass of the structure spilled out across the street as the broken foundation lay open to the sky. He jumped down on the other side with a thump, more dust clouding around his boots as he strode off down the middle of the avenue.

It was strange. This part of the city didn't feel as empty as the rest of it had been. He glanced to the shadows, eyes squinting at the blotches of darkness. There were people here; he caught a glimpse of a girl watching him, small and broken in the alcove of a building. And there were more, all watching him.

Where are you, Zim? What did you do?

His eyes narrowed, and he angled over to the girl. She pulled into the darkness more, trying to hide as he stepped into the tattered doorway. He reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder. Not surprisingly, she kicked out at him, elbowed him in the stomach and he hissed as that sent a spark through his bruised ribs.

"Calm down," he barked at her, shook her a little until she obeyed and went limp, eyes cast at the ground between her feet. "What happened here?"

She didn't answer, mumbled something under her breath. He pressed her lightly against the cool brick of the alcove, tipped her head up to meet his eyes and asked her again, slow and firm. "What happened here?"

"I... I don't know. Everything just started shaking and then something exploded." She fumbled over words, the whole thing suddenly rushing out. "I was home sick today and then the TV went dead. And then it was shaking and everything was falling and I went outside because people were running outside anyway. And then the huge Thing stepped into the middle of the street and started shooting people and throwing them around. And I don't even know..."

"Shh." He set a finger to his lips, caught her eyes again and held them there. She was only about eleven.

"It's not a lie," she whispered. "That's what happened."

"I know," he whispered back.

Her eyes shined back at him for a moment. "You... You do?"

Ignoring that, he glanced back out into the street where the rain was sifting down. "Look..." Realizing he didn't know her name, he paused, letting her fill it in.

"Lisa."

"Look, Lisa, I need you to tell me what the Thing looked like and where it went. It's something I have to take care of."

"Are you an FBI or something?" She suddenly seemed very interested.

Dib blinked, paused for a moment considering that. What a joke. No, he was only the insane son, the failure of the Membrane name. "No, but I've dealt with this kind of thing before."

Almost disappointed, her posture shrunk down again, and she bit her lip as she thought about his questions. "It was big and green, with a lot of dark red. Um, walked on two legs like the mech in the games my brother likes to play. And it shot purple lasers all over. Oh, and it had lots of long tentacle thingies that would grab people and throw them around..." Tears came to her eyes, and her hands clenched in the fabric of his coat. "It was scary."

Dib swallowed, pulled back again but she wasn't letting go. Great job, Dib. You should have asked someone older and less frantic. "Hey, it's okay." He offered weakly. "Which way did it go?"

She blinked, glanced up at him again and swallowed. "That way." She pointed off across the street. Northwest.

He stepped back, managed to pull his coat out of her grasp, and held her at arms length by the shoulders. "Okay. Thank you. Now, I want you to go find an adult and stay with them. It'll be okay."

"What? No, don't leave me alone." A frantic look spread across her face, but he held her firm.

"I can't stay with you. I have to take care of this. You'll be okay." He pointed across the street, at another of the dark patches of shadow he had seem people lurking in. "Look. Over there are some people who will take care of you. I have to go stop the Thing. Okay?"

She slackened again, and he pulled away, glad that she wasn't clinging to him anymore. The girl seemed to panic again as he stepped back into the street, almost throwing herself at him. He held her off, leaned down again and looked her straight in the eye.

"You'll be fine. Now go." He pointed again, watched as her eyes followed his finger. And then she went, stiffly and scared, but without a backwards glance.

He didn't wait, didn't stop to see that she made it across the street. His boots slapped the wet pavement, the light drizzle of before now an almost-rain that was threatening to turn into a downpour. His mind snapped to Zim. Rain and its effect on the Irken. He'd better find him fast, or he wouldn't be finding him at all.

The raindrops pelted harder as he stepped out into the middle of the vacant intersection, the cold water starting to soak through his hair. A wet wind hit him from the side and he glared into it, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his coat and holding it closed around himself. He could feel the moisture seeping through the fabric already.

He just walked for a while, scanning the city. Getting drenched and progressively more pissed as time went on. Only the loud patter of rain on the pavement around him and the occasional loud crash of thunder overhead. It was getting dark too, streetlights out and only cloudlight and the steady flash of lightning in the sky. And then something shattered. It was a glass sound, not anything caused by the storm. He wiped spattered rain off his glasses and pushed his soaked hair back, looking over toward the sound.

This was stupid. It was raining too hard. Even if Zim was inside a robot, he always had an aversion to water. He wouldn't be out trashing the city in this. He could smell fire, the air thick with a smoke smell and the rain at his feet swirling black with the ash it washed out of the sky. He came to the corner, turned and stared into a raging fire. Somehow he hadn't seen it from the other side. The building was three away from the intersection he was standing at the edge of. The flames licked at the brick, charred it black as the rain pelted down in long sooty streaks. There were people standing out in the street, transfixed by the flames. Someone ran out of the building, through the shattered glass window across the front of it. Looters.

Dib walked up to them, stepped up next to the one girl in the group. She didn't seem to notice he was there for a second, the rain pounding and splattering, the cracks and pops as the burning building blazed red and orange. She jumped when she realized, pulled back and stared at him. The guys caught on then, turned and stared him down.

"What do you want?" one of them sneered.

"You shouldn't loot," he said, hands in his pockets. They reacted, opened their mouths to say something, but he cut them off. "But I don't really give a shit. Where'd the mech go?"

It wasn't like they could say they hadn't seen it. The whole street had a huge rupture down the middle of it, the sides smeared black where the laser had cut through. He looked at it for a moment before turning back to them. The one kid holding a TV motioned off down the street. He nodded at them and moved, boots sloshing through inch deep water.

And then he heard the scraping clump behind him. Metal ripped against asphalt through the pooling rain. He whirled, taking a step back as he connected what the thing was. The metal tentacles whirled and writhed, the cold legs dripping streams of rainwater and the cockpit gleaming in a sudden flash of lightning. He could see Zim's sadistic grin from inside, see the teeth and the smirk and the cruel twitch of his antennae as he identified his enemy.

So you lived, those alien lips whispered.

Dib swallowed, noted that the looters had run off somewhere. It was just him and the Irken.

It poured for a while, Zim standing there as the arms of his mech wriggled in the pouring rain. Water dripped from it in the clashing dark, and all the human could hear was the pounding splash of the downpour.

And then the mech moved, shot off the spot it was standing so fast the rain left a pool undisturbed for a second before it caught up. Dib ran, crossed sideways through the pooling water and into one of the empty buildings. He plunged into the darkness, felt the metal tentacle wrap around his foot and jerk him. He fell, almost smacked his face on the concrete floor as the arm retracted. Somehow, it slipped, released his boot at the last moment and dropped him to the ground. He took off into the building, made his way through the back door and into the alley on the other side.

He felt the metal thing smash through the building, didn't turn around to see it but kept running, the adrenaline somehow letting him ignore the smarting pain up both his legs and through is broken ribs. Air burned in his lungs. No, wait. It wasn't just there. He felt the laser heat up the space around him, choked on the ionized air molecules and made one last attempt to jump into an open door as he felt himself blacking out.

neoKOS-MOS: Second chapter for flying metal child. I hope to have the next one up sooner. Reviews are still nice.