I'm having fun writing Tak in these chapters, because I like figuring out how a character "sounds" in my writing style, and I've learned even if I don't entirely feel like I've snagged how to write them. Something I learned is that sometimes you gotta just bulldoze through it to learn how to write certain characters! And some forced bonding time!
Warning: I had fun with this chapter, but be mindful that there is a good amount of swearing, some mild/moderate injury depending on your limits I guess idk, and (possibly excessive) use of threats
Enjoy!
Part 72: Deals
Dib sat, tapping his fingers on the table, as he and Tak had their own impromptu staring contest. Or, he'd call it an impromptu staring contest but he wasn't sure what he'd lose if he blinked first. For all he knew, she was going to stab him if he did. She looked pissed enough to do it. Despite being inside, she hadn't let her disguise drop, yet. He had wondered briefly if it was broken before pushing the concern from his mind. It wasn't his business, nor his concern, if it was, anyway.
Not that he'd know how to fix it regardless, and Zim certainly wouldn't without a price. Not that Tak would let him anywhere near her PAK. He chanced a glance towards Zim, who was glaring just as harshly at Tak as Tak was at him. It had turned into this weird triangle glare-off the moment Dib had sat them all down in the kitchen. He hadn't been able to form a plan the entire drive home. Despite his best efforts his brain had been more concerned with whether Tak would try to crash the car than figuring out step two of inviting her to stay.
He hadn't thought that far ahead. He'd thought of how to "threaten" her with Gir during her stay, but he hadn't thought of where she'd stay. She wasn't going ten feet towards his room, if he could help it, and she wasn't going into the labs if either of them could help it.
The door slammed open. Zim jumped out of his chair, his disguise glitching back into existence. Dib caught the shocked look flash across Tak's face and turned. Gaz's boot was still raised in the air when he did. The door swung back slowly and she nudged it aside. Gir hopped up on the counter, squealing his greeting. Gaz kicked the door shut again behind her.
"Mary!"
Gaz sighed. She ignored the name and walked towards the group. Dib caught the plate in her hands and blinked at it. It was… fudge. She had a plate of fudge.
"You kick down my door like we owe you money and you're carrying fudge…" Dib says.
"Congrats, you're not blind," Gaz says. She practically slammed the plate on the table and looked Tak in the eye. "This is the single time that I'll be doing this, asshole, so pay attention. Take these," she shoved the plate closer to Tak. "As a peace offering while you're here."
Dib stared at her, mouth agape. "What."
"That is not what I asked of you," Zim says flatly, slumping back in his seat. Dib whirled around to him.
"WHAT."
"Too bad, asshat," Gaz spat. "If she's staying here and you're not allowed to fight, then I'm not allowed to fight, either. So, this is my way of showing I'm serious that I won't."
"Wh—how do you know about that? I haven't even looked at my phone, yet," Dib says.
"Zim texted me."
"How?"
"The Pak," Zim and Tak say.
Immediately they set about their glaring contest again. Dib shook his head. He shared a glance with Zim and both reached for the fudge. Gaz slapped their hands away, giving them a seething look as they rubbed their hands.
"It's not for you, you vultures!" she snapped. She huffed, leaning back in her chair and turning to Tak next. "So, just why the hell are you here? Assuming you haven't planted a bomb, that is."
"I don't speak to lower lifeforms," Tak spat, refusing to look at her again.
"OH, where was this sass at the Space Market, you whore."
"GAZ!" Dib shouted, blooming red. Zim burst out laughing, holding his sides. "She doesn't do that!"
Gaz turned to Dib sharply. "In one of the few, beautiful moments of your life, Dib, I'll say you're right." Gaz said. She turned to Tak. "You slut."
Tak growled and Gaz pinched the rim of the plate, starting to pull the fudge back.
"I'll just take these back, then."
Tak's hand shot out and she plucked one off the plate. Gaz stared at the plate a moment before looking slowly up to Tak with a worsening glare. Zim scooted his chair closer to Dib. Tak popped the fudge in her mouth, not breaking eye contact with Gaz. Gaz watched her. She let go of the plate, getting a surprised yet confused look from Dib, and leaned back in her chair.
"Well, slut?"
Tak's antennae and eye twitched. "…Tastes like wood."
"…woody?" Dib asks. Zim shot the fudge a look.
"That's it?" Gaz asks.
"What did you expect?" Dib asks. "What's in them?"
Zim chanced a glance Gaz's direction. He wanted a piece, but wasn't keen on the potential beatdown he would've incurred. Given she was going to take them back, however, he was probably safe to chance it, right?
He waited until Gaz had turned back to Tak to snatch one and pop it in his mouth.
"Well, I was hoping for more of a reaction," Gaz admitted. Tak took another, glaring Zim's way this time. "I laced it with oleander."
The table was silent for a moment. Dib turned to her, horrified. Zim and Tak both ran the word through their PAKs. The second they had gotten their answers, both spat the fudge out and bolted from the table. Gaz shot Zim a confused, then annoyed, look as he bolted past her towards the fridge, throwing it open. Tak raced to the nearby sink, flipping on the water.
"Why did YOU eat one?!" Gaz shouted. Zim didn't answer, already starting to drink half the purified water container.
"OW! Zakte!"
Dib and Gaz looked over to see Tak holding her mouth, small streams of steam coming from under her fingers. Zim halted his glugging of the water to laugh. Dib ran a hand down his face.
"Oh… the sink doesn't have a filter…" he mumbled guiltily. Dib shot up from his seat and Gaz shot her hand out, latching onto his sleeve and almost throwing him back into his seat. She pinched her brow, sighing. She turned to him with an exasperated look.
"You almost killed her just with the sink and I bothered to go the extra mile," she says.
"I don't want to—"
"She's fine," Gaz says, waving him off.
Tak clamped her hands further over her mouth, fighting back any other signs of pain or weakness. She could hear Zim's loud laughing, but she was far more preoccupied with the burning she felt in her mouth and throat. Her PAK was healing it, of course, but it was still painful. She was used to pain on her limbs and her torso, not inside her body, and especially not on her tongue or interior of her mouth. She swallowed her blood and glared at Zim through slightly blurred vision.
No tears, no tears, no crying in front of them.
She took two marching steps to reach Zim and snatch the water jug out of his grasp to drink the last half of it herself. It clearly hadn't been burning him, so logically it was fine to have. She kicked him in the shin hard enough to knock him down to one leg temporarily when he tried to snatch the water back, marching back to the sink to spit it out. It looked like heavily diluted Irken blood as it sank down the drain.
She sighed, watching it go down the drain, with this small moment to think. She wondered, briefly, if she should bother trying to expel the first piece she ate. But, it had already been mostly digested by this point, and if she wasn't feeling any of its effects now, she probably wouldn't be. She glowered at the wall, feeling as if she'd panicked for nothing, gotten scalded for nothing, and possibly made a fool of herself, for nothing.
Zim hopped on his shin for another moment, moving forward enough to shut the fridge door. Gaz clicked her tongue, turning to look at Tak over the back of her chair.
"So. You don't feel a thing?" she asks. Tak's antennae almost flattened against her skull and she whipped around enough to glare and hiss at Gaz.
"Are you defective?!"
"No, but apparently, she's an impressive assassin," Zim grumbled, taking his seat with the huff.
Dib bent back in his seat to look at Zim's PAK. "It must be the filtrators in your PAK. That's great to know! I wonder if you're immune to all poisonous plants."
"We're not testing it," Zim says immediately.
"Not by eating any!" Dib clarified. "But maybe with a copy of the filtration system in a controlled environment in the lab…"
"Not today," Zim mumbled. Dib hummed and nodded. He clapped his hands together, clearing his throat.
"So… who wants to go out?" he asks nervously. The room was deathly silent.
Yeah, this was a great idea, just genius, he thought wryly. Best decision you've made all year, clearly. Try to befriend Tak like you did Skoodge, because that would obviously go over swimmingly…
Zim elbowed him gently as Tak took her seat again, glaring vehemently at them. Dib sighed. He stood, moving to the living room briefly to grab his laptop. If he was going to be monitoring two volatile Irkens in his own home, he was at least taking notes and getting some homework done.
Gaz leaned back in her seat, pulling her Game Slave out, and setting her foot up on the underside supports of the table. Zim had learned not to question where Gaz always had one of those things stowed away years ago, but the question still haunted him. He only marginally believed that they hadn't incurred on any of her plans for the day. But, he wasn't about to check, either. He would much rather have her there with them—poisoned fudge aside. He stuck his leg up over her own. Instead of shaking him off, Gaz readjusted so that his ankle rested comfortably over hers.
Zim smirked. He admitted, it felt more comfortable. Once Dib returned to his other side, looking nervously over the homework he'd pulled up onto the screen, Zim's PAK deposited his tablet into his hands. He glanced over to Dib. His hand was hanging at his side while he chewed on his pencil. Zim dropped his hand, intertwining their pinkies. He caught Dib pause in his thoughts and then smile, resuming the chewing on his pencil. Tak, meanwhile, was watching them, making mental notes.
She wanted to throw the fudge right into Zim's face, but she restrained herself. The last thing she wanted to do was start a battle within the first night, much less the first hour. If she were there for any other reason, she would have shot off a plasma shot the moment she'd spotted them in the park. Dib fidgeted in his seat a little, feeling Tak's eyes boring into him. Gaz glanced up periodically. Tak was questioning if she was legitimately playing a game or not. There was a sharp beep from Dib's laptop and he sighed, staring down at the low battery pop up.
"I have to move to my room," Dib says. "I won't be long, ok?"
"Take your time, Dib-stink, you actually have homework left," Zim says, smirking. Dib stuck his tongue out at him. He gathered his things and retreated to his room, moving as quickly as he could without making it too obvious how badly he'd wanted out of the room.
He pushed the door mostly shut behind him, leaning against it with a heavy sigh. This was… possibly a disaster. His only solace was that neither Irken had actually tried to throw a punch yet. Just invite another arch nemesis into the house… I'm going to sleep horribly…
He trudged to his desk, sliding into the chair and plugging his laptop in with sluggish motions. He could hear the occasional muffled sentence through his door in the silence. He couldn't make out anything being said, but he could still hear the relative tone of voice. He set about trying to focus.
He had two papers to do, math homework—there was a snide remark made and who he thought was Tak shouting something—a fast upcoming due date for a resource quota on his finals paper for Physics—Zim was shouting now, and Dib quickly checked his phone. Gaz hadn't texted him or tried calling. He could leave them be, then, for now, right?
He could hear stomping feet. He hadn't heard a table flip. Or anything breaking.
Dib waited, sitting as silently as he could, for anything else. He had assumed that The Computer would either step in or at least notify him if anything started to go completely sideways. He hadn't even heard Gir intervening for anything, yet, so it couldn't have been that bad. But that all was perhaps wishful thinking on his part.
"Computer?"
"Gaz handled it."
"How—?" The door slammed open and Zim stomped inside. Dib almost jumped out of his chair. He swiveled around. "It's been ten minutes..?"
Zim dropped onto the bed with a frustrated huff. Dib turned in his swivel chair more, just enough to glance over his shoulder at him, and inwardly sighed. Zim had already started to kick off his boots and Dib grimaced at the powdery dirt littering his floor as they hit the ground. He supposed he should be grateful that Zim hadn't left them on for the dirt to get on his bed. Zim's hologram dissipated and he pulled Dib's pillow up to his chest, burying his face in it. He peered over the edge of the pillow to watch Dib work at his desk. It was all but two minutes before Dib heard a tell-tale sigh.
"Come here," Zim says, stretching out one hand to Dib. Dib glanced at him and smirked.
"Oh? Sorry, couldn't hear you over my homework," Dib teases, twirling his pen.
"You heard me."
"Be nice about it and maybe I will."
Dib glanced back at him, both boys entering into a stare down, waiting for one of them to cave. Zim was heavily debating if he should be the first to back down knowing Dib was waiting for him to crack. It was a fun little game, in his opinion. He just wasn't patient enough for it, at the moment. To Dib's shock, just before he was about to break, Zim sat up and reached out both arms.
"Please?" he asks.
Dib stared at him a moment before he abandoned his chair. Zim wrapped his arms around Dib's neck and scoffed at him, pulling him down on top of him.
"HA. Easy."
"You're cute, you know," Dib says into Zim's shoulder. He hears something like an offended gasp.
"LIES."
"Mmm. No, you are," Dib decides, snuggling up to him more, seeing the edge of what might have been a blush on Zim's face from his peripheral. He grabbed the second pillow and pulled it under their heads. He could afford a few hours of avoiding his homework. "Did you finish that paper yet? I'm only halfway through."
"You have all month," Zim mumbled, burying his face into Dib's neck. "Put it off."
Dib snorted. "That's how people get failing grades."
"Mmm. That's how I get to spend more time with you," Zim says. Dib could hear his smirk.
"That's not fair."
"I don't play fair," Zim mumbled proudly.
Dib chuckled, closing his eyes. There was a choked noise from the doorway and Zim groaned loudly. His PAK shot a limb out, hooking on the top of the door. From what Dib could see when he tilted his head, Tak was standing there in the hall looking very confused and very stunned.
"The deal was ten feet!" Zim shouted.
"Sorry, lovebirds," Gaz shot in just before the PAK leg slammed the door shut. Dib buried his face in the pillow.
"Kill me," he bemoaned. Zim scoffed, laying down again to bury his face in Dib's collar.
"It's too late to be asking for that," he says.
Tak stood stock-still in the hall staring at the door. Gaz looked her up and down with one brow raised. She shrugged and elbowed Tak harshly in the arm.
"Ow—what?!"
Gaz grabbed her arm and started dragging her down the hall. "He had said his room was off limits," she says dryly. "And since I'm your guard dog right now, we're sitting in the living room."
"I do not need to be monitored," Tak hissed. Gaz stared at her a moment before harshly pulling her toward the couch.
"I disagree." Gaz says. She shoved Tak onto the ouch and fell into the cushions beside her. Tak immediately shifted away from her. Gaz turned to her, raising a brow slowly. "Oh, really?"
Tak was silent. She crossed her arms, turning to stare forward, back ramrod straight. Gaz scoffed. She set her Game Slave onto the coffee table. She relaxed into the couch, watching Tak for any reactions.
"Ok, then. I'll talk. What's with the British accent?" she asks. Tak's antennae twitched harshly in her direction. She swerved to glare at her, only to be met with Gaz smirking.
"This is just how I talk!" Tak snapped.
"Mmm, I'm sure," Gaz said slowly. She sat up before Tak could snap at her again. "Just for the record, you know the only reason you're here is because Dib is an idiot."
"We made a deal," Tak corrected.
"No, he's an idiot for not shooting you on sight," Gaz clapped back. "I could've hid your body. He's just too nice."
Tak couldn't help but stare at her, a little aghast.
"So long as you don't try anything while you're here, he'll let you stay for a while," Gaz admitted. "Just try to convince Zim not to off you first."
"I wouldn't be defeated by a runt like him, much less any Defect."
"That, too. Stop calling him that and you'll be able to crash here a lot longer," Gaz snapped. Tak grumbled, sinking into the cushions. Gaz crossed her arms, studying Tak up and down. "Hey. How long are you actually staying?"
"…I do not know."
Gaz leaned closer, unperturbed by Tak's PAK slowly slipping out the tip of one of the spiked legs. Tak tested how close Gaz was willing to get. It wasn't until Gaz had leaned in close enough for Tak to count the number of darker streaks in her golden eyes that Tak shifted backward on the couch. A deep unsettling weight forming in her core.
"Just as a reminder," Gaz begins, "Dib's had years of experience breaking into Irken bases, and he will find a way in."
Tak grimaced. While Zim was given a half-assed, trashed SIR unit and had jerry rigged his own ship instead of having a sanctioned and assigned Voot, his actual base had been standard, if perhaps a little outdated. To be able to sneak in, whether the system was set to kill or stun, would have been a challenge. Especially, to get into the lower levels of the base.
"I. Will not. Try to conquer Earth," Tak ground out. Gaz leaned back, looking much more lax.
"I believe you," she says. Tak relaxed further into the couch, watching her. "Did you know spicy human food is spicy because it's toxic?"
"…what?"
"It's technically toxic, and it's hot to keep things from eating it, you know an evolutionary defense, but our ancestors thought that it tasted good, so we decided to ignore that. Did you know humans specialized in adaptation rather than anything else evolutionarily? It's how we ended up colonizing and exploring most of the Earth's surface and figured out how to survive in most of the harshest areas despite Earth trying its hardest to kill us. Temperatures or other natural conditions be damned. I get the impression Irkens do the same thing on a lot of planets you use."
Tak was silent. Searching back into the history of Irkens through her PAK, she was hard pressed to find any evidence that Gaz was wrong in that assumption. If a planet's air or resource supply wasn't hospitable for Irkens, they made it so.
"We have stripes," Gaz says suddenly. Tak snapped back to the present.
"What?"
"We have stripes. But thanks to our fucked up stew of genetics they're just the same color as the rest of our skin, so you can't really see them," Gaz says idly. Tak blinked slowly at her.
"What."
"Yeah. We have invisible stripes."
"What."
Gaz turned to see Zim standing in the entry of the hallway, staring at her in utter confusion. Dib snorted behind him, slipping between him and the wall with a snicker.
"I thought you woulda been able to see them," Dib says.
"To be fair, we didn't know that till kind of recently," Gaz admitted.
Tak blinked, her brain taking in the information for a second before she finally opted she had to walk around with it for a moment. She slipped into the kitchen silently.
"Grab me a water, will you?" Gaz called after her. Tak shot her a volatile glare over her shoulder. Gaz pressed her lips into a thin line. Not what I meant…
Gaz turned to Dib and Zim, patting the cushion and arm rests on either side of her. Dib plopped onto the couch with a sigh. Zim took up the arm rest. Take came back into the room with two glasses of water. She handed them out to the siblings, face placid, switching eye contact between them. Dib cautiously took the glass. Gaz leveled her gaze with Tak, watching her as she took her space back up at the end of the couch. Dib looked between her and the water. She was just watching him.
"I-is this about the sink?" Dib asks, chuckling nervously. "I didn't know about the fudge, and I didn't think you'd use the sink!"
Gaz swirled the glass. She caught Tak's eye and drank. Dib set his glass on the coffee table. "Coward," Gaz says, setting her empty glass down beside his.
"I'm not," Dib claimed.
As Zim snorted, bracing for the smack Dib laid on his arm. Not long after there was a clap of thunder. Tak's head whipped around to the window. It wasn't raining, but the cloud cover had increased considerably since they'd arrived. Dib's phone pinged and he pulled it out, scrolling through the notification.
"Oh." He shrugged, pocketing the phone, and taking the glasses into the kitchen. He turned to watch over his shoulder as he went. "Hey, I know Gir is supposed to keep her out of the lab, but if the tornado watch turns to a warning, we're all going to get downstairs."
"Why?" Tak asks slowly.
"I got a tornado warning for the area," Dib called from the kitchen. Zim groaned, slipping further down the armrest. Tak flicked an antenna curiously, looking back out the window. Regardless of what a tornado was, she wasn't going outside on the risk it would start to rain.
"What is that?" she asks.
"A tornado is a violently spinning column of air," Gaz says flatly, spinning her finger in the air to demonstrate. "They're invisible until they pick up dirt and debris."
"Debris?"
"They can pick up cars," Zim says, smirking. Tak blinked at him.
"What. And that's normal here?" Tak asks. Gaz shrugged.
"Yep."
"That is the type of thing Irkens find on Death Planets."
"Sorry, what planets?" Dib asks, peering out of the kitchen doorway.
"Yeah, Zim learned a lot of this really fast," Gaz says, sounding completely unperturbed. Tak narrowed her eyes at her. If she was so nonchalant about it, surely they didn't have to go into the base's lower levels. Another ping came from Dib's phone.
"We're in the red on the radar," Dib says, ushering them towards the linen closet.
"Why do we need to move underground?" Tak asks. "I don't believe you."
Dib stared at her. Gaz held up a finger, glancing out the window expectantly. Sure enough, a siren started to sound off in the distance. Gaz sighed, begrudgingly getting off the couch. "God damn it," she grumbled, kicking the floor on her way to the linen closet.
Dib was messing on his phone as he waved Tak over to it as well. She hesitated before getting up at the second round of the siren. Once they'd all piled into the elevator, with her furthest from the button panel, Dib held his phone out to her. On screen a tornado was moving slowly across the country-side farming plot. The camera view was shaky, but Tak could see as the tornado pulled a house cleanly from the foundation, the debris breaking apart and swirling into the mass before being flung out in all directions. Next was a truck, a tree, then the nearby shed—the latter being pulled apart before the tornado was even on top of it.
"…I see…" Tak says slowly. Gaz gave a quick laugh, pulling her phone out as well.
"Wait, wait," she says, smiling deviously. "I'm showing her an F-5."
"That's not fair," Dib says warily.
"What degree of damage is that?" Zim asks. Gaz's smile only widened, putting Tak off to the point she shuffled just a little further from her. Dib sighed as Gaz sifted through videos for something she deemed suitable.
The elevator stopped, opening the doors for them. Zim and Gaz were the first to exit, with Gaz holding out the phone screen for him to watch as they made their way down the hall. Dib shot his arm out once he and Tak had exited, waiting for Zim to get further away before he allowed the two to start walking, slowly, behind them.
"I just wanted to make something clear," Dib whispered, barely audible if it weren't for Irken hearing. Tak raised an antenna at him, her gaze flicking over to where it was clear Zim was too distracted by the video to be listening clearly. "If you put any effort into killing or hurting Zim… I will throw you into that tornado myself and see how you fare."
Tak's shoulders went just a little more rigid. She scoffed, halting in the hallway. "I will simply wait it out above the clouds, then—"
"I advise against trying to fly anything through the storm," Dib says curtly. "Under no circumstance is anyone flying out of the storm to get above it until it's done. The lightning will crash the ship—no exceptions."
Tak's brow twitched. She stomped past him until she had gotten close enough to Zim and Gaz that Gaz turned to her next, rewinding the video. Tak watched as the massive tornado on screen, easily two miles wide, tore through the edge of a small town.
"And that," Zim says, tapping his claw on the screen. "Is what I will throw you into should you move against either sibling. I shall find one."
Tak shot up to look at him. Dib came up behind her, passing by without another word into the room they'd been walking towards. Tak growled, scowling at him.
"Liar."
"Miyuki," Zim snaps back. Tak stood ramrod straight, her lips in a thin line and her eyes wide. Gaz looked between the two, brow raised.
"Who?" she asks. She looked into the cinema room Dib had entered only to find him looking at the blank screen intently, before he started to gape at it instead, a realization donning on him. "Hey. Why the hell is Tak suddenly so quiet? Dib, why are you so quiet? Zim, what the hell? Who the fuck is Miyuki?"
Zim hummed, merely watching Tak. Tak simply nodded, walking stiffly into the cinema room, conflicted. Gaz grabbed Zim's sleeve harshly when he tried entering next. She grit her teeth, trying not to smack him upside the head for ignoring her.
"WELL?"
"She's…" Dib wheezed, placing his palm over his chest. Tak sat robotically on the couch he was partially leaning over. "She was a world leader."
"…'Was'?" Gaz prompted.
"A Tallest," Zim clarified. "I was behind an… incident."
Killing our WORLD LEADER is more than an incident, Tak thought bitterly. No, I'd like to live.
"You killed one?" Gaz asks incredulously. "And you got away with it?"
"Two," Zim corrected.
"From some energy blob?" Dib guessed, shrugging his shoulders uncertainly. "The same one, if I recall."
"Yes," Zim sighed. "The same one…"
"You killed two world leaders, and got away with it?" Gaz asks, sounding almost excited.
"Not entirely," Zim says flatly, recalling his almost immediate reassignment following that and the giant robot incident. He sat on the opposite side of the couch to Tak, patting the space beside him for Dib to take up. Gaz started to peruse the DVD collection, humming to herself as she started to grab options.
"I'm offended you didn't mention that sooner," she says idly.
I'm stuck here, Tak thought wryly.
She glanced over to Zim and Dib. Dib had settled into Zim's side with Zim's arm lazily thrown over his shoulders. She was stuck trying to process what she was seeing, again, until Gaz fell down between her and Dib, breaking her line of sight.
"We're watching horror," Gaz announced. Zim cheered even as Dib sighed, sinking further into the couch and Zim's side.
"Horror," Tak repeated.
"A movie genre," Gaz says. "Or, better for context, some examples of what we'll do to you if you try to get past security."
Security…? Tak caught movement at the door and looked up. Gir was stood in the entryway, saluting, though his eyes were still blue, with a floating… tiny moose. She tried not to question it.
"Just don't try to enter any of the labs," Zim says. "And they won't have reason to follow their protocol."
Tak deflated in her seat. The sheer chaotic energy is enough to keep her at bay for a while rather than risk injury. She had an idea on what Gir could do—she wasn't keen on finding out what the strange one could be capable of.
She resigned to staring at the screen, crossing her arms. The tiny moose eventually caught her attention, flying over to them to drop random snacks into their laps. Tak jumped when it dropped a bag of chocolate in her lap with hardly a glance, not stopping until Gaz waved it off. Tak kept her attention split, never fully focusing on the movie. It did garner more of her attention here and there, despite her efforts. Regardless, she kept attention on the area around her. Dib would occasionally text someone on his phone, as would Gaz. Gir flew into the room on more than one occasion, screeching and laughing, only to chase Mini Moose back out again.
"Eric says the storm stopped," Dib announced halfway through the first film.
Tak chanced looking over to him when he did. He was practically laying on Zim. This was normal. This was normal? The Irken who was so hellbent on creating creatures of mass destruction and weapons of equal caliber was… sitting in a cinema watching movies. Perhaps they were trying to trick her. Get her via a false sense of security. Even if they weren't, it was for a few days at most. Tak ran the time through her head, hardly noticing when Gaz readjusted until her arm pressed against Tak's.
Tak froze, her body locking up at the contact. Gaz didn't seem to notice (or perhaps didn't care). Tak's skin, however, buzzed. She clenched her sleeves. Gaz flicked her eyes to the motion. She quickly shifted off, settling to resting her arms behind her head instead. She cracked an eye open at Tak in a sidelong glance and sighed.
"Hey," she whispered. She… thinks Tak looked her way. Regardless, she was going to keep going. "Relax. I'm not going to shoot you. …Fudge aside, I'm not going to try stealth assassinating you."
Tak sighed, loosening the grip on her arm. She hadn't even noticed she'd almost torn the fabric. She scoffed, ignoring Gaz's gaze on her. "Right."
Gaz frowned. "Believe what you want, then. See if I give a shit."
Just a few days, just a few days, just a few days, Tak repeated in a mantra. She could handle that.
END