A/N: Alright. For those of you wondering why I'm posting this chapter so late in the week, it's because I got hammered with an 8 page paper two days before it was due again. So no complaining, you guys. Just be thankful I'm even getting it up this week. Because I STILL have homework due later today. But I've decided not to keep you all waiting any longer and get this next chapter of ZADR Orange up before I do anything else. So without further ado, here be the long awaited Chapter 28. Hope you guys all had an awesome Thanksgiving, and remember, feedback be much appreciated. =3 Oh, and much thanks to those of you who faved or added the story to your story alert lists. =3
Warnings: Extreme OOCness
Rating: M for later chapters
Disclaimer: We do not own Invader Zim, nor any of the characters from it. We do not make any money from the writing of this story.
Zim: Notgonnadie
Dib: Me
Gaz: Both of us
Beta: Notgonnadie
Completely deadpanning at Dib's words, Zim sent the hybrid a shocked look. "Wh-What? K-Kill you? I-I CAN'T KILL YOU! DON'T YOU GET IT? I LOVE YOU, OKAY? WHY DO YOU HAVE TO MAKE EVERYTHING SO DIFFICULT? You know what? FINE! You want someone to die in order to settle this! Then go ahead and KILL ME! GET FAMOUS! VIDEOTAPE YOUR GRAND DISSECTION OF ME! WE ALL KNOW YOU WANT TO!" he countered back, throwing Dib slightly off guard.
A new flood of tears streaming down his cheeks, Dib had by now sunk down in his spot even more at Zim's own words. "B-But I...I don't...I-I don't want that...All I want is to be with my mom again..." his voice came out in a quiet whisper as he bowed his head and began crying uncontrollably to himself, no longer having the fight left in him to argue with Zim or even speak at this point.
Baring his teeth and growling at that response, Zim seemed to be having an emotional overload as a few sparks shot out from his PAK and fell to the ground behind him, lighting some of the dry grass under him on fire. "Well, you CAN'T, DIB! She's DEAD! And NOTHING can change that!" he screamed back angrily at the other.
Flinching back at Zim's yelling, not noticing the fire at first, Dib could only stare up at Zim with a look similar to that of a kicked puppy.
More sparks flying from his PAK, Zim only continued to scream, his eyes clenched shut, preventing him from seeing the look on Dib's face. "AND NOW! I-I give you EVERYTHING I have...and you STILL HATE ME! I CAN'T DO ANYMORE! I'VE GIVEN YOU MY HOME, MY HEART, MY EVERYTHING!" he stomped his foot, pulling at his antennas in frustration as his own tears were streaming down his face full force now.
His breathing shaky now as he could no longer keep his gaze focused on the Irken but only on the ground in front of him, Dib sat completely paralyzed in his spot, unable to bring himself to say even one word for fear that the other might lash out at him even more.
Falling to knees just as soon as he had finished ranting at the other, Zim sobbed uncontrollably to himself as a few more sparks continued to shoot out of his PAK, slowly diminishing as his earlier anger seemed to leave just as quickly as it had come.
Shifting his tear-filled gaze up enough to notice for the first time that Zim's lawn was on fire once the other had stopped yelling at him, Dib's eyes grew wide as all he could do at first was bring up a shaking hand to point behind the Irken at the flames beginning to build up upon each other, growing higher with each passing second. But the other didn't seem to notice as he was too busy crying to himself.
"No...No!" he finally managed to force out before bolting to his feet and pushing Zim out of the way of the flames before they blocked them both in. Then turning to search through the base in a panic, Dib called out for his sister as the smoke began to fill the rooms. "Gaz! Gaz! Where are you?" he screamed, first checking for her in the room Zim had given her to stay in.
Sitting up in his spot after having been shoved to the ground roughly, Zim finally noticed the flames himself and gasped. "DIB? GAZ?" he frantically looked around before noticing the fire hydrant in front of his house. "That will do!" he said to himself before rushing over to it and using everything he had to try and open it with his spider legs.
Running to the elevator when he was unsuccessful in locating his sister, Dib then told it to take him down so he could search the lower half of the base for Gaz. Exiting it about 30 seconds later, he stopped dead in his tracks when he realized the lab was completely filled with smoke now, the fire having spread from the lawn through electrical wires that had been connected to the lawn gnomes outside.
Recovering quickly, he wasted no time in wading through the smoke to continue searching for her blindly. "Gaz! Gaz!" he called out, coughing into his hands when all his yelling only served to make him inhale a bunch of smoke. After a good two or three minutes of searching however, he just about gave up on finding her when he suddenly stumbled across what looked to be his sister's body. Panicking, he rushed to her side. "Gaz!" he exclaimed, falling to his knees next to her and pulling her into his arms to shake gently. "Gaz...Gaz, please wake up..." he pleaded with her.
Barely conscious at this point, Gaz groaned, something having exploded down in the lab from the fire and knocked her out cold. "Wh-What hit me?" she asked as she slowly began to come to, bringing a hand up to rub her head.
"There's no time to figure that out right now. We have to get out of here!" Dib said, helping her back to her feet before leading her back towards the elevator the best he could. Managing to pull her in with him, he then told the elevator to take them back up. Feeling the elevator beginning to lift them back up for all of 20 seconds, Dib stumbled forward with Gaz when it jolted to a stop all of a sudden, everything going dark as all the power seemed to go offline suddenly.
Meanwhile, back outside with Zim, said Irken continued to struggle a moment more before finally succeeding in ripping open the hydrant, gushing water all over the yard and base. Getting caught in the blast himself, however, he was left to get blasted by the water pumping out of the hydrant at a high velocity. The gushing water put out the fire, but unfortunately it followed the fires previous path along the wires and therefore caused the base to short circuit.
Merely hanging inside the elevator, Dib found himself completely unable to do anything at this point to help their current situation when he suddenly felt a drop of water on his head and looked up, realizing that water was dripping through into the elevator with them. "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, NO!" he slammed his fist against the door desperately as he now felt the water building up very quickly around their ankles, the fire now the last thing on his mind. "HELP! SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP US!" he screamed, trying to get ANYBODY'S attention at this point.
His skin burning and in severe pain, Zim stumbled unsteadily back into the base and began banging on random panels. "DIB! DIB, WHERE ARE YOU?" he screamed, unaware that they were trapped in the elevator.
Stopping his banging upon hearing Zim's voice, Dib looked up with wide eyes. "Zim? ZIM!" he continued to pound his fist on the door as loud as he possibly could. "WE'RE DOWN HERE IN THE ELEVATOR! IT'S NOT WORKING, AND IT'S QUICKLY FILLING WITH WATER!" he screamed before looking back down and realizing that it was now nearly up to their waists.
Eyes widening when he heard Dib's voice, Zim gasped at his words. "HOLD ON! I'M COMING TO GET YOU!" he instructed the other before rushing to the elevator shaft to rip the top off with his PAK legs so he could crawl down into it to the elevator. Then, pulling out a laser from his PAK, he set to work beginning to melt a hole out of the top of it.
The water just about at his chest and already at Gaz's neck, Dib didn't notice the hole being made in the top until sparks began raining down from the top of the elevator above them. "ZIM! HURRY!" he screamed as Gaz was on her last few moments of air.
Putting on the speed, finally cutting out a good sized square, Zim tossed it aside and reached his hand down into the elevator. "GRAB MY HAND!" he told them, adrenaline the only thing keeping him moving at this point.
Wrapping an arm tightly around Gaz's waist, Dib did as he was told and reached up his hand the best he could to take Zim's, managing to get a good enough hold on it so Zim could hoist them up out of the overflowing elevator and climb back up the elevator shaft before collapsing, dropping him and Gaz onto the ground.
Laying there for a few long moments, panting and holding his sister close, Dib blinked his eyes open enough to realize that he was covered in blood though not his own. Looking over at Zim wide-eyed, he realized the Irken's body was completely covered in it now. "Zim!" he screamed, crawling over to his prone body on the floor, unable to make out any movement from the other at all. "Oh, God...Oh, God...This is so much worse than when you fell in the pond at the park..." he said, afraid to touch Zim for fear of hurting him. But lifting the alien up into his arms nonetheless, he wasted no time at all in carrying him over to the couch to lay down carefully.
Unable to move, his body finally giving out once he know Gaz and especially Dib were safe, Zim doubted whether he'd ever want to see water again in his LIFE. But thankfully for him, the hydrant had at least finally run out by now.
Still panting heavily, Dib swallowed thickly. "Dammit...I have to find him some towels or SOMETHING!" he said before pushing himself up to start searching through the top rooms in the base for anything he could use to dry Zim off. Fortunately for him, he managed after a minute or so of searching to find a closet in the same hallway Gaz's room was in that was stocked with several warm looking blankets. "I guess these will have to do for now." he said to himself before grabbing one of them and rushing back out into the living room, not hesitating to take off Zim's clothes first before wrapping the blanket around him and trying to rub some warmth into his body.
Shivering non-stop at this point, Zim didn't even realize he was being moved at all as he shook in Dib's arms.
Meanwhile, Gaz sat in the middle of the floor, trying to ring out some of the water from her clothes. "Come on, Dib! Leave him there! He'll be fine!" she said as she got back to her feet and made her way over to the front door, arms crossed. "We're LEAVING! I've had enough of HIM!" she glared at Zim. "This was the final straw! He's trying to KILL us!" she exclaimed, just wanting to get out of there while they were both still alive to do so.
Eyes growing wide at his sister's words, Dib turned in his spot to look back at her. "No, he's not! This was all an accident! He was just about to leave when that fire started! And he turned over all control of his base to me, so who knows what it might do to him when it comes back online if we leave!" he tried to convince her otherwise.
Merely glaring at him however, Gaz grabbed Dib by the arm. "I. DON'T. CARE. DIB! He's put you in danger for the last time! If he dies, it's none of our business! I know you were just about to leave him anyways! Who's to say he didn't plan all of this to keep you here?" she said, tightening her grip on him and narrowing her eyes as she began leading him back towards the front door.
Struggling for a moment against her, Dib finally managed to pull his hand away. "Listen! This is the last time I'm going to say this! None of what's happened over the past couple of days is his fault! It's not his fault Dad kicked us out of the house! And it's not his fault that I got sick! I asked him to change my DNA! He was just doing what I told him to! So if you're going to blame anybody for all of this, you might as well blame me! Now, I can understand if you want to leave here, but I'm not going anywhere!" he said firmly, not about to just leave Zim's side when the other needed him.
A/N: And there you have it. Your weekly update of ZADR Orange. =3 Poor Zimmeh though. D8 He just can't seem to catch a break from water these days, can he? Anyways, next chapter will hopefully be up on time next week. Hopefully. But no promises. The last weeks of school are always the most hectic for me, and I know for a fact I have another paper due next week as well as several finals to begin studying for. So just bare with me. Now let me take this time to respond to those of you who reviewed. =3
To Casykirby: Well, thank you. =3 Yes, it is quite sad that they're fighting again. And I wouldn't say it clears up anytime soon really. But you'll see what I mean by that in a few chapters. As for what Cat Human told you, that may be true, but I'd rather not give out links here on FF. If I were just going to do that, I wouldn't have started posting the story here. DA doesn't host the entire story because people on DA were pissing us off. So that only leaves one other website this story will be fully posted on. To find the link to that website, however, you'd have to do some outside research yourself. Notgonnadie and I have posted the link on several other websites, so it's really not that hard to find. Here on FF though, we refuse to just give it out unless we actually have a need to (ie. Chapter 34). We're not preventing people from finding it themselves, but we'd like to keep a portion of our fanbase here on FF. Mainly because when people read it here, they're less lazy when it comes to leaving reviews. On all the other sites we've ever posted it on, people just read it and give us little to no feedback, usually because they're too lazy to sign in quickly or make an account. That pisses us off. We don't force people to review, but if they were avid reviewers on one site then stop reviewing the second we move it to a new site, it's really a pain in the ass and makes us less motivated to actually work on this story. And to be honest, it's the reviews we get here on FF that motivate us the most. So I PREFER you people read here. We've already lost a few FF readers to the other sites who stopped reviewing because they figure it doesn't matter anymore to keep in contact with us. But we actually LIKE getting to know our fans, so it's kind of a downer when we lose you guys on here.
To Meta-Knight-1-fan: Lol. XD Here's an even more unexpected turn of events. XD And don't worry. Zimmeh would never do that to Dibbeh. Though, I can't say Gaz would agree with me on that point. XD
To Sapcoat: Well, thank you. =3 And thank you for actually being the first person to wish NGD a happy birthday. =3 Yes, this story be just full of drama nearly every chapter. XD But that's what keeps you people reading. So we're glad you enjoyed it. =3 As for your question, I'd have to say Gaz's reaction was probably closest to "ready to kick Zim's butt" as can be seen in today's chapter. XD But anyways, we hope you enjoyed said chapter. =3 So until next time~
To Watermelondrea: Well, thank you! 8D Yes, this story does have a tendency to have that effect on people. This story and onions. XD They're really not a very good mix. But anyways, as for whether Dib leaves Zim or not, I'm afraid you'll have to wait another chapter or so before finding out. Until then, however, here be a new chapter. =3 Hope you enjoy. =3
To heartofstone15: Yep, and they suffer even more in this one. But you'll see whether they make up in a chapter or so. XD
To Vithian: Yep. Her birthday's November 20th. =3 So thank you for the shout out. And happy late birthday to you as well. =3 I'm sorry to hear you don't get to celebrate Thanksgiving over there in Australia. D8 That really does suck lots of ass. I have a friend who about a year and a half ago moved to England and was devistated when she found out they weren't going to be celebrating Thanksgiving anymore. And it was one of her favorite holidays too. I know she wants to move back here to the states, but her mom says she can't come until after she's graduated high school and entered college. Unfortunately, that won't be for another 4 years or so. DX But anyways, yes. NGD and I do feel oh so warm and fuzzy after a day of tormenting both Zim and Dib. XD And I know what you mean. My bathtub is too small too. I'd still like to use it though. My mom won't let me, however. She says it's primarily for our cat and dog whenever we give them baths. And of course, THEY don't enjoy it. (Pouts) Lucky little buggers. I forget how I found ZADR. I actually think I was already drawing it at the time but just didn't have a name for it yet until I started looking it up and realizing lots of people already drew the pairing. XD Sonic the Hedgehog was my very first fandom though. I grew up with Sonic the Hedgehog. Drew and wrote stories about it until the time I switched over to IZ. I still love the fandom, but I do less for it nowadays. It's kind of a trend of mine. I'll stay with one fandom for YEARS at a time before finding one that can rival it. I'd really love to switch back to Sonic the Hedgehog though. When I left the fandom, I left several unfinished ideas for stories in my head. I should attempt getting back to those. It'd be fun. =3 And Sonic the Hedgehog has always inspired me in my writing, even if my old stories from back then sucked ass. Revisions. That's what I need to do. Perhaps I'll work on that later today. As for the "Other ZADR," that pairing has really grown on me thanks to NGD. You should try looking up a few of her stories and comics. She's written plenty. And they really are adorable. o3o You should feel loved. (Hug) We certainly do. So thank you for always reading and reviewing. =3
To Illisandria Carthain: Well, thank you. 8D Teh interaction was needed though. Can't progress the plot without action. XD And there's plenty more of that to come. But don't worry. It's not ALL sad. Dib does have that kind of personality in this story though. Not that he can really help it when everything that could possibly go wrong in his life does. Lol. XD But anyways, as for your question(s), no. I don't think you've asked that question before. And if you mean "Special Someone" as in a lover, I'm doubtful he'll be finding anyone like that in this story. Though, you never know. We haven't finished writing yet. So perhaps we'll think about it. But so far as we've written, no. I'd say Dib and Gaz's mother was the closest "Special Someone" he's come to as of yet in this story. And she's dead. So yeah. We'll see how things unfold from where we are in writing the story. We shall indeed keep it up to the best of our abilities. And much thanks to you for the shout out to NGD. =3 We really appreciate it. (Hug) Until next time~
To lillybean queen of the i ocean: Woot! Glad to hear ! XD
To DTDY: Well, hello there, new reviewer! 8D So nice of you to join us! We're so happy to hear you're enjoying our story so much. =3 And we hope you didn't kill your brain or eyes reading through it so quickly. XD Here be an update to satisfy your ZADR Orange needs. And hopefully the next one will be up by Tuesday, given homework doesn't get in the way too much. Surely this new chapter will give you a clear idea of what both Zim's and Gaz's reactions were like. Anyways. We hope to hear from you again soon. =3 So until next time~