Ever wanted to go Urban exploring? I haven't gone, but I want to. It's sounds fun but risky depending on where you go. But hey, "urban" exploration in REALLY rural areas means really creepy and abandoned houses. Not so much for these fellas being in the middle of a city lol

Gear up, kiddos. the Space Market starts next installment!

Enjoy!

Part 60: Urban Exploration

Dib bounced on his heels exiting the car. He snatched the flashlight from the backseat. He slammed it shut, skipping around to where Zim was exiting himself. Zim looked him up and down, smirking at the silliness in the sheer amount of joy Dib was exuding.

Dib locked the car behind them as they started down the sidewalk. Zim looked over the decrepit building that they were approaching. It looked to be an old school—Zim could only tell based on the name in large lettering above the main door. Windows were broken, paint was peeling off the wall, and he noted that half of it was covered in ivy. The lawn wasn't in much better shape. Zim looked back at Dib skeptically.

"It's fun, I promise."

"What is this that it has you so excited?" Zim asks. Dib started tossing his flashlight up with a skip in his step. "…You're as excited about this as you were the haunted house… Dib."

"Hm?"

"Is this place we're going haunted?" Zim asks suspiciously. Dib gave a strained smile. "DIB?"

Dib snorted, stopping to laugh. He waved his hands frantically when it looked like Zim was ready to drag him back to the car. "No! No, it isn't, hahaha. I don't think it is."

"Think?"

"I'm 90% sure it isn't," Dib clarifies. "If anything, it's not on the database. I found out about urban exploring a couple years ago and I've done it a few times for The Swollen Eyeball. C'mon, I've wanted to check out this place for a while now."

"Why was it abandoned? …Mur—?"

"No, it wasn't because of murder," Dib cuts off quickly. Zim smirked.

"Then why? Wouldn't it be better to have more educational centers?" Zim asks.

"Do Irkens have multiple schools? Um—training centers?" Dib asks. Zim shrugged.

"We have a few planets. The big one is the one I was at—it houses most of the Invaders and Scientists or Inventors," Zim says. He dropped his voice low. "I think only because it's just larger as a planet. It's really not that different from the others."

Dib snorted. "That's what I think of private schools."

"Anyway, any facilities that aren't used are still kept up for later use. Humans don't do the same?"

"Well, no. Unless there's enough money to keep them open, usually." Dib says, catching his flashlight one last time as they stopped at the front door.

He pushed it open, stepping inside first. Zim followed close after him, taking in the decrepit building with distrust and disgust. Dib shined the light in Zim's face. Zim swatted it away like he was batting away a spider web. He backed up into a spider web and screeched. Dib laughed, holding himself up with the door as Zim ran around trying to get the webbing off, screaming something in Irken that Dib almost understood under context alone.

Dib wiped away tears, stopping Zim by snatching at his sleeve and pulling him over to get the webs off his PAK. Dib's hands phased through the hologram, sending small shivers of refracting light around where he made contact. He let himself get mesmerized in it a moment while he brushed the webs off.

"I'm burning this place down," Zim hisses. Dib sighed, swiping his hands together once he'd finished. He doubted Zim would ever be over that house.

"No," Dib says tiredly. "Look, if you burn it down can you at least make sure it doesn't track back to either of us? I don't wanted implicated in arson."

"Of course, I am more than capable of that," Zim says proudly. Dib was a little concerned by the pride in his voice, but he elected to ignore it. He was far more interested in exploring the school. Zim cocked a brow at him. He phased off his disguise, confident he wasn't going to be running into anyone here. "You sure are excited about a school."

"It's an abandoned school," Dib clarifies. "Much cooler than regular school."

"I fail to see why," Zim admits.

Dib watched his antennae flicked around, picking up sounds. A racoon several halls down that would hiss or run when it heard them coming, a flock of birds in the courtyard area, and a leaky pipe somewhere he suspected was the cafeteria or a bathroom. He picked up some wind through broken windows and creaky lockers as well. One antenna bent around in a circle before they finally settled. Zim pouted, wrinkling his face up a bit.

"It smells musky," he says. Dib snorted.

"That's probably all the dirt and moss and maybe some mold," Dib says.

He dug through his jacket pockets, pulling out two masks. He handed one to Zim. Zim took it, examining the adjustable straps. They had a tie off in the back he could use to keep it more secure. He cocked an antenna at him curiously. Dib shrugged.

"Well, a normal one wouldn't work," he says, covering his own face. His voice came out slightly muffled. He pointed to his ears. "You don't have ears."

Zim smiled, pulling the mask on and tying it off. It fit well enough, but he was going to have to adjust it and he knew that already with nothing for it to hang off. Either way, it was a gift he was happy to have. He followed Dib down the hall, side stepping the larger pieces of debris and miscellaneous items that had somehow found their way into the halls.

The building itself was full of peeling paint lining every wall. Most of the classroom doors were ajar, and whatever ones weren't Dib was prone to checking if he could push them open. The few that were locked Zim simply kicked down. Notebooks and textbooks that had been left behind were still on desks or shelves. Zim kicked at a stray desk and it toppled in a plume of smoke. Dib snorted, falling over onto the teachers' desk when Zim went screeching away from the dust.

"Do not laugh at my suffering, you donkey!" Zim shouted, kicking at another desk, causing a similar dust cloud to plume. Dib snorted, falling until he sat on the floor next. Zim stormed up to him, covered in a thin layer of dust that coated his skin. "You're evil for laughing."

"I will never apologize for laughing at something funny," Dib says. He looked Zim over, admitting that he looked like he was in dire need of a shower now. "Can you shower at the house?"

"Of course. I wouldn't touch the water in that house if I couldn't use it," Zim says. Truth be told, it was one of the first things he did.

He brushed off as much dust as he could as he followed Dib out. Dib was talking about the history of the school. Zim wasn't particularly interested, looking around at the graffiti instead. He couldn't make out most of the words—the letters were distorted and sometimes hidden away with the drawings. Dib pushed open the door to the stairwell with a loud creaking groan on the hinges. It snapped Zim out of his gazing. Dib started down the stairs, confident they were sturdy when he didn't hear too much creaking.

Zim paused at the stairs, noticing that the stairwell wasn't that large. A few floors at most. The only place the stairs leading down could be going to was the basement. Zim grimaced, not exactly excited about the prospect. He got an idea and smirked, backing up onto the stairs leading to the second floor. Dib swung his flashlight around. He looked around when he didn't see Zim.

"Zim?" Dib called. Zim didn't answer. Dib pouted, climbing back up the stairs. It was probably a bad idea to try going to the basement, anyway. Dib turned, going up the second floor. Something dropped in his peripheral.

"BOO!"

"AAAH!"

Dib screeched, swinging out with the flashlight. Zim caught it, the head of it narrowly missing his temple. Zim started laughing, holding onto the flashlight when Dib let it go, slumping against the wall.

"Oh, you ass."

"I should have taken a picture! You should have seen your face!" Zim cackled.

Dib noticed the PAK legs were poised along the railings, holding Zim up in the space between the stairs. Dib yanked him forward onto the landing. Zim fell beside him, his PAK legs sprawling out around them like a cage. Dib poked at one, watching it twitch and retract back into the PAK. Zim pushed himself up, scrubbing chips of paint off his cheek with a scowl. Dib smirked down at him.

"That was too easy," he says. Zim shoved the flashlight back into his hands. Dib took it, sticking his tongue out at Zim, and stood. Zim scrambled up after him, following him to the second floor's door.

Zim walked ahead of him, taking in the graffiti and mis-reading most of it. Dib didn't bother correcting him, only marginally sure that he knew what it really said, and instead flicked his light off. The hallway was far brighter than the first floor, with most of the windows either blown open or broken, letting in a lot more light than downstairs. The windows downstairs had been covered in a thin layer of grime that blocked out the light.

Dib found a row of lockers that had all been left open, notebooks and pencil cases strewn across the floor by the all too eager students leaving in what Dib could only imagine must have been a stampede. Zim picked up a notebook, holding it open by the tips of his claws to examine it. Dib toed a locker door and paused.

"Do all humans have such horrible handwriting?" Zim asks. He threw the notebook back down.

When Dib didn't answer Zim looked up to find the hallway empty. He blinked, just to make sure his eyes or PAK weren't tricking him. Zim started down the row of lockers, occasionally kicking one shut. He swore if Dib had gone off to chase a shadow, he was never going to let him live it down. Zim made it to the corner with no sign of Dib. He ran up and down the hall, finding nothing. He made it back to the row of lockers, noticing several more were shut.

"Dib?"

Still no answer. Zim furrowed his brow. He wasn't an idiot. He was well aware Dib had a mischievous streak that rivaled his own. It was one of the things Zim liked best… when it wasn't directed at some sort of comeuppance for something he had done. Usually. He did enjoy seeing how creative Dib could be when he put his mind to it.

Zim walked down the length of the lockers, hoping to jump into a classroom to see if Dib was hiding out in them. One of the lockers flung open, a hand grabbing at his arm.

"GOT YOU!" Dib screamed.

In Dib's memory, three things happened at once. Firstly, Zim screamed and Dib was reminded just how loud and ear-piercing that scream actually was. Secondly, the sound of metal on metal next to his head. And thirdly, the punch to the gut. A hard punch to the gut. Hard enough that Dib doubled over, reaching up to hit Zim in the shin for the offense. Zim gaped down at him, lost for words in a rare moment that Dib wished he could enjoy, but he was busy trying not to puke all over Zim's shoes. A small, niggling thought at the back of his mind whispered 'do it', but Dib ignored it.

"Ow…" he finally says.

Zim's eyes flicked to the PAK leg currently stuck in the neighboring locker's door. It wriggled out of the door, slipping back inside the PAK. Zim made a mental note that he really had to do something about the PAK's reaction to things when Dib was around.

"ARE YOU TRYING TO DIE?!" Zim screeched. "AFTER ALL THE WORK I'M DOING TO STOP THAT FROM HAPPENING?! How ungrateful."

"Ugh… you shouldn't have dropped on me like a screaming ghost, then," Dib says, pulling himself using Zim's own arm sleeve. He almost dragged Zim to the floor with him before the alien regained his balance.

"Get off! You ungrateful swine!"

"Oh, I haven't heard that one before," Dib comments, rubbing at his gut. "Damn, you haven't hit me like that in a long time."

"You hadn't deserved it in a long time," Zim says.

"Is the PAK's reaction, like…" Dib glanced at the hole in the locker door. "…involuntary?"

"Yes," Zim hisses. He started to fuss over Dib's shirt and jacket, careful not to agitate his gut any more than he already had. "It's a defense mechanism."

"A reflex?"

"Yes. As was the punch," Zim says smugly. Dib glowered at him a moment.

"Yeah, I got that one," Dib says. Zim hummed, pulling Dib down the hall.

"You deserved that," Zim says. Dib shoulder checked him.

"I shoulda punched you in the stairwell," Dib joked. "Stupid flight response."

"HA! That would have been entertaining."

Dib snorted, swinging his head around, spotting a hallway that looked cleaner than the rest. He started down it, with Zim following close behind, until he hit the first classroom door. He pushed it open, poking his head in. Zim heard him squeal as he darted inside. Zim followed, smiling when he saw that it was an old science class laboratory. Dib was absolutely giddy, rushing around the room and examining any old equipment he could find. Zim watched him hold onto a microscope.

"Don't you have money? Buy yourself a higher grade microscope if you're so desperate for one," Zim says. Dib looked up at him, sheepish.

"O-Oh, that's not why I want it," he admits. He held it up, testing the weight. "I wanted it because I could go on my shelf. Like a souvenir."

"Why would you want a souvenir?"

"Just…" Dib looked at it again. He smiled up at Zim. "To remember."

It took Zim a moment to realize why and his face turned darker immediately. Dib snorted at the sight. He held the microscope up.

"Do you want a souvenir, too?" he asks. Zim nodded dumbly. Dib looked around the room, spotting half a cabinet's worth of flasks and beakers. He dug through it, finding the least grimy one, a flask, and held it up. "How about this if we clean it up?"

"Perfect!"

Dib tossed it to him. Zim caught it, hopping up a little to snag it from the air. He looked absolutely gleeful, turning the flask around in his hands.

"Absolutely perfect."

They walked the rest of the school in a short time. There hadn't been much else to discover past the science lab and the empty gymnasium. The acoustics of the gym had been quite impressive. Zim, however, had been more interested in the warped flooring.

"Why is it beveled like this?" he asked.

"The rainwater probably got under the wood. Real wood floor bevels like that when it floods," Dib explained, climbing over the arched floorboards like a small playground. Zim had started jumping on them, surprised at how well they held his weight. Some of the wood was splitting and succumbing to either wood rot, mold, or termites.

The cafeteria hadn't been much of a sight. Dib would chalk up the most interesting thing to being the gutted appliance section. The distinct line in the grime on the walls was the only clue as to what equipment had been hooked up where. Zim was quick to back out of the kitchen. It was the most covered in mold. Dib decided against exploring the bathrooms. Even if nothing was in them he wasn't keen on seeing how much disarray they'd fallen into. Zim had started to lead the way down the hall next. They rounded the corner, and Zim ran to the doors at the end with a laugh.

"The hall collapsed!" he declared, walking through the doors. Dib came up beside him, letting the doors swing shut behind him.

"Huh. It didn't collapse. It's an open-air walkway between sections."

"Why?"

Dib shrugged. "Aesthetics? Would be a bitch in winter."

Zim hummed. He could see the parking lot to his left, and a small courtyard in the 'U' shape that the rest of the school's walls made up to his right. The ceiling of the open-air walkway had collapsed at some point. Leaving the walkway with the framework instead of any actual cover. He started to cross and stopped at the sound of thunder. Zim jumped back into the short tunnel section just in front of the doors. Dib looked out the windows along the tunnel, seeing the rain starting to pour down.

Their car was just yards away on the other side. Dib could make it if he sprinted, but he wasn't willing to leave Zim trapped in the hall tunnel on his own until the rain had stopped. Dib slumped against the wall. Zim joined him, grumbling something about the 'stupid weather', setting his flask beside him.

"It's okay, it shouldn't last too long. We'll go to the car once it stops."

"It's still stupid," Zim grumbles. "I should have taken a paste bath once I saw the clouds."

"It was a 40% chance of rain. About a coin flip's chance. We'll just wait," Dib says, rocking his feet. Zim hummed, watching the water trail down the windows on the other side of the tunnel.

"It's not… ugly," he says. Dib snorted.

"Ugly?"

"No, I said it is NOT ugly. Listen better," Zim orders, rubbing at Dib's head, just over his ear. Dib pushed his hand away to fix his hair. Zim leaned against him as he did.

"Do you like watching it, then?" Dib asks.

"Hnn… I like the sound… somewhat. It sounds nice when it hits some things. Not so much on other things. Rain on grass is nice. Rain on metal is… ugh." Zim said, letting himself drop down until he was resting his head along Dib's elbow.

Dib left him there, listening to the rain. He felt Zim flinch just before a crack of thunder rolled over them. It was followed by lightning shooting across the sky. It happened again moments later. By the third time Dib looked down at him to see Zim looking uneasy.

"Are you alright?" Dib asks. "Is it the thunder?"

Dib tried to recall if Zim had ever been afraid of thunder before. He couldn't quite recall ever being present when a bad thunderstorm had happened. Zim was either in the bowels of his lab or stuck in the school and sitting as far from the windows as possible. He had noticed, once or twice during class, seeing a very slight flinch in Zim's posture during storms. He'd taken quick notes of it and then never did any follow up. The notion hadn't made much sense to Dib—after all, Zim loved explosives. He loved fireworks especially.

A spare thought ran through his head and he furrowed his brow.

"Wait, is it because they just… pop up?" he asks. Zim groaned, nodding.

"I do not… enjoy unwelcome noise like this," Zim says. He held his antennae down. Dib saw them twitch alongside him as another boom of thunder hit. He quickly shrugged off his jacket, getting some objection from displacing Zim in the process, and rolled it up.

"Here," he handed it over to him. "Try putting this over your antennae. It might block some noise out."

Zim took it, unfurling the jacket and rewrapping it around his head. Dib had meant it to just sit on top, but Zim's method left his hands free. Dib made a mental note about investing in some thick hat of some sort for when it stormed next. Zim leaned back against Dib again, waiting. When the next boom of thunder hit them, the difference was noticeable. Zim smiled, relaxing against Dib.

"Aaah… much better."

"I thought you had liked explosions," Dib admitted.

"I can prepare for the noise when I know they're coming," Zim says. "Thunder storms are different."

"There's no warning for the sound."

"Yes."

Dib hummed, relaxing into the wall. "Maybe we can make some special 'antennae-muffs'."

"…what?"

"Like ear-muffs. But for your antennae," Dib says, snickering at the image. Zim groaned.

"Those would look terrible." He says. He smirked, chuckling at the notion. "Let's do it."