Driver typed in the code for the bar's location.
She tried thinking of something, anything that could somehow repair their short-lived 'relationship' (if it could even be called that), but nothing would come to mind; at this point, it was probably irreparable.
She had considered the possibility that he would react badly to her, but being held at gunpoint? For a moment, she had been certain that he would actually shoot her.
Why didn't I check his backpack for weapons while he was still sleeping? Why didn't I keep my gun near me?
She realized now, that bringing an unknown alien soldier to her house with the intention of hooking up with him was the stupidest, most reckless idea she'd ever had in the first place.
She felt sorry that they would now part on such bad terms without ever seeing each other again, but at the end of the day, she had never hoped for this... one night stand to last for more than one night, right? Was it even a one night stand? It was more like a... one night... making-out-and-getting-drunk thing.
This is just depressing.
Ultimately, she said nothing: she just turned the key, and the teleportation started. Once again, she took a direct route to the bar, against her usual habit of making multiple stops before the correct destination, as she didn't want to upset Zim any further.
As the twirls of bright colors engulfed them, Zim spoke up with that same spiteful, hostile voice:
"One last thing. The moment we step out of the teleporter, we act like we have never met each other before . And if word gets about all this, you'll regret it", he threatened her without even looking back at her face.
His words stung her like needles in her heart. Why was he being so antagonistic towards her? Did she really disgust him to that point? Was the chemistry from the night before really all fake?
Oh, why am I taking this all so personally? I'll never see him again anyway, she tried to comfort herself, though… that didn't really make her feel much better.
The teleportation ended and the bar appeared before them. She didn't really want to be there again after all the clients and even the owner had seen them making out so openly, at least not that soon. Now she would have to pick another bar to go to for a few weeks at least before she got comfortable enough to come there again; which was a shame, because she had grown quite attached to the place.
Zim readily jumped out of the cabin and headed straight towards the exit, ignoring her presence just like he'd shortly before stared. How cold.
She too stepped out of the cabin and gladly, gratefully noticed that there were no clients in the room: that wasn't uncommon, though, and plus, they had probably reopened just a few hours earlier.
She turned her head to her left, to the counter, and noticed that the barman, too, was missing. The only sign of life in the bar was the quiet, gloomy music coming from the speakers on its ceiling.
Now that was a bit weird: the blob barman, as far as she knew, always stood there even when he had nothing to actually do, polishing the glasses and the bottles as if it was his own way of fidgeting. This was... also good, she supposed. Was the bar even open? But the teleporters and the music were on, so it had to be. Maybe he was just at the bathroom? … did blobs even need bathrooms?
She turned to the teleporter, which should have recharged by now, to go back home and forget all about that morning, maybe by extensively cuddling with Cat and eating a box of chocolates, but the moment she did so she heard the sound of electric tension going out resounding in the bar.
The music stopped playing.
The teleporters' lights went out.
The scans went out.
She heard Zim, who had almost reached the automatic exit door, complain:
"Oh, great. The power went out! Lousy hovel! Hey! If you don't open this door in ONE second, I'll laser it down!"
Driver's heart thudded.
This is bad, actually. Really bad.
"Zim, be quiet!" she ran up to him, urging him to hush down.
"ARGH! Didn't I tell you to pretend not to know me?!" Zim barked at her, "And go tell your blob friend to let me out of this rattrap , or I'll-"
"Don't you see?" she interrupted him speaking under her breath, signing him with her finger to make silence. "Someone cut the power as soon as we came in!"
"HEH? WHAT?! WHY WOULD SOMEONE DO THAT?! " he shouted five times as loud as before.
Driver flinched at the volume of his voice. Was he doing this on purpose?
"Will you just be q-"
"Well, well, well" a low, menacing voice rumbled in the empty local.
She and Zim turned to see that the barman was slowly sliding on his blob-like body towards them, probably having entered from the door behind the counter.
And he was holding a shotgun in his tentacles.
"Look who had the gall to show their ugly face again" he growled, a furious expression on his face.
Oh uh.
"Hah! Oh, good!" Zim exclaimed, relieved. "He's only talking to you! Well then, before you shoot her for whatever reason you have, can you just quickly get that door open for me?"
"Actually, I was talking to the both of you " the barman raised his voice, sharply pointing the shotgun up at them. " A nd you both better remain still".
"Whoah, whoah!" Driver put her hands up in front of her in a defensive stance, "What are you doing?!"
Really? This again? In the same morning?
Zim, who looked even more shocked than her, angrily shook his fists at him, and shouted:
"Hey! How dare you point that gun at me?! What did I even do to you?!"
"What did you even do to me?" the barman repeated.
Zim was about to say something back, but then he turned to her, and asked:
"Alright, let's cut the crap, where are my monies?!"
Driver raised an eyebrow.
"Your... monies?"
"Yes, in case you forgot, miss, you two quaffed down two bottles of my finest space wine last night, and then left without paying!"
"Yes I did!" she protested "I distinctly remember placing the money on the table! It was even more than the actual bill!"
The blob narrowed his eyes.
"Is this some kind of joke on whatever dumpster of a planet you come from? Because here, it's not funny at all".
Driver shook her head, confused.
"I don't understand" she said.
"You call these 'monies'?!" one of his tentacles dug inside of his gelatinous body and drew out a handful of pieces of paper, which he then threw at her feet.
Driver looked at them with crescent terror: a blank piece of ripped paper, a coupon for a milkshake, and a used train ticket. She recognized them: they were all junk she had forgotten to take out of her pockets the day before. But no monies among them.
Oops.
"I am so, so, so sorry! I-I was drunk a-and I mistook them for monies! So..." she quickly searched her pockets, but they were all empty. She had forgotten to bring along her wallet.
She desperately turned to Zim.
"Zim, would you please be so kind to pay for me? I-"
"No way!" Zim shouted, crossing his arm on his chest, "I'm not paying for something I didn't even want in the first place! And you said you would pay it all up!"
She gritted her teeth, trying to remain as calm as possible.
"Zim, please, I'll repay you as soon as I get home-"
"Hah! I see now! This is just another way to lure me into your lair again, isn't it?!" he stubbornly shook an accusatory finger up at her.
She clenched her fists. If a shotgun hadn't been pointed at her, she would have jumped and strangled him right where he stood.
"Tsk!" the barman eyed him with a disgusted expression. "You would even sell out your girlfriend to get out of this. You Irkens truly are the scummiest beings in the universe"
"SHE IS NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!" Zim roared, outraged. "Look, bar drone, this human agreed to pay all of that poison-wine! It's her who owes you the monies! I don't even know her! I don't even know her name! I have nothing to with her! SHE - IS NOT – MY - GIRLFRIEND!" he repeated, hitting the floor with his foot for emphasis.
"Nothing to do with her?!" the barman retorted, looking bewildered.
"You think I didn't see you last night?! You two perverts turned my humble bar into a damn strip club ! She was fondling you, and YOU stuck your tongue so far down her throat, I thought you were trying to plant an EGG in her! It even scared some clients off! And I don't even wanna think about what you did once you teleported out!"
Both she and Zim flinched more and more at every accusation as if they were bullets fired from his shotgun rather than his mouth. She was about to say that actually nothing much had happened afterwards, but he was probably not in the mood for a joke right now...
"Shut up! Stop talking! T-That's not at all what happened! You saw wrong!" Zim shouted in a desperate, guilty voice.
"Look" Driver stepped in, "If you just turn the teleporters back on, I'll bring you your money in less than a minute, and-"
"Oh, yes! Yes, about that..." he said, as if he'd just remembered something important, his lips suddenly curling in a snickering grin. "You see, after you left with my monies, I scanned the database of the teleporters to trace back your IP address".
Driver froze in place.
Oh, no.
"And guess what?" he spoke with a increasingly enthusiastic malice.
Oh, goddammit, why is this happening-
"All I found under your teleportation IP was a bunch of corrupted data. And not just for last night , no, the same type of bug shows up multiple times on all of my teleporters: every - single - time you used them"
"Ahaha, yes, well, you see" she weakly smiled, "I have no idea why that is. My key is probably broken. It's quite old. I should really get it replaced-"
"SO" he spoke over her, " on top of robbery and public indecency, you are also guilty of teleporting IP falsification. Which is an offense even worse than the other two".
Her fake smile disappeared, replaced by a desperate, pleading expression.
"Mister..." she begged, her lips trembling and her voice cracking.
"Now let me ask one question I think you know exactly the answer to..." he mercilessly carried on: he was clearly having a lot of fun tearing her down, like a detective who had just cracked the case of the century.
"... if I searched through the Intergalactic Bounty Archives for the description of a tall, naked ape with long hair on their head, how high would the reward for their capture be?" he concluded his monologue on an extra arrogant note.
Driver swallowed, hard. Boom. Gotta give it to him: he'd really gotten her.
Zim looked up at her, his antennae perking up and his mouth agape in an astonished expression:
"WHAAAAAAAAA? YOU are a wanted criminal?!" he exclaimed.
Thank you for spelling it out loud for us, Zim.
"Mister, please" she begged the blob, "I've been a regular here for more than a year! I've never caused you any trouble before, I... I-I like your bar" she spoke with genuine sadness and regret.
"HAH! Oh yeah? You like my bar?! So that's why you robbed me?!" the blob furiously scoffed. "You thought I would just let it slide, right? Thought I was a pushover, only because I acted nice to you? Maybe you felt entitled to my monies, that's how you criminal scum think, right?! Of course someone like you would fornicate with an IRKEN! I bet you two are just made for each other! Well, guess what? My kindness was all fake! Pure business! I never liked you, you revolting, shameless, good-for-nothing, overgrown ape. And now you and your little bug boyfriend are gonna be dumped right where you bel-"
With one swift movement, Driver drew her ray gun from the holster under her jacket, took the safety off and shot the barman right in the middle of his body: a blue light zapped out of the gun and when it hit the barman's gelatinous body, it exploded in a rain of blue jelly that splatted all over the tables, chairs, and floor in the nearby vicinity; his shotgun fell on the ground with a loud thud.
One of his gelatinous parts landed at Zim's feet, who jumped shouting a surprised:
"HEY! What the heck!"
Driver turned to him:
"Where is your ship?" she asked.
"Uh-what?!" he asked her back, still evidently dazed from what had just happened.
Driver scowled at him, and he fearfully recoiled. Good: hopefully that was enough for him to understand that she was officially, one hundred percent done playing nice to him or any other arrogant alien for that day.
"Your ship" she impatiently repeated, with a hard edge in her voice now. "We need to leave, right now, where is your ship?!" she took a few steps towards him, when suddenly she noticed that the exploded parts of the barman were moving.
In fact one of them, the one which still had his eyes planted in the middle, was looking at her. A mouth formed under the eyes and shouted, livid:
"You won't get away with this, you monkey! And that cockroach too! You won't make out of here alive! I ALREADY CALLED THEM ANYWAY! YOU ARE DONE FOR!"
"What?! What cockroach?! Where?!" Zim turned his head around all panicked.
Great. So he had called the authorities on them. Probably as soon as they'd stepped out of the teleporter. That meant they didn't have much time...
Driver darted towards Zim; she grabbed him by his collar, and started dragging him behind her.
"AGH! HEY! What are you doing?!" he protested, his boots hitting the floor as he flailed his legs around.
Driver paid his protests no mind: she quickly walked past all the tables in the bar, down to the automatic door that was its only exit, and only then did she turn Zim around and let him plop on his butt.
"Open it" she ordered him, pointing at the closed. door.
"How am I supposed to do that?!" Zim retorted, looking like a mix of indignant and scared.
"Don't you have anything inside your backpack that could open it?!"
"What backpack? I- Oh! Ohohoh, yeah, right..." he drew his mechanical legs out of his backpack and turned the laser guns on their tips to the metal door.
Suddenly, Driver heard a sound coming from behind them; she turned and found with horror that the smaller parts of the barman were now converging to reform the owner's body: his eyes were on the top, angrily pointed at her, and the shotgun was back in his tentacles.
Oh, right. Blobs can do that...
"That's it! I'm killing you! I don't care if the reward is lower that way!" he roared.
She tried shooting him, but aimed too low: the lower half of his body exploded, but the tentacles with the shotgun and his face remained intact, shaking but still balancing themselves on the collapsing base.
"AND STOP SHOOTING ME!" he shouted.
That at least gave her time to grab the nearest metal table and flip it over, using it as a shield for her and Zim.
"Duck!" she yelled as she crouched behind the table, though Zim didn't really need to make himself smaller to be covered by it.
A loud bang exploded in the room and a ball of red energy hit the table, forming a bump right in front of her face. Then the shotgun recharged with a whistle.
She turned to check on Zim: his lasers were slowly cutting-burning the metal door in the shape of a rectangle. He was halfway through, but at that pace...
"Can't you do it faster?!" she urged him.
"Don't rush me! I'm almost done! This stupid door is thick!" he shouted back, "Why don't you take care of that crazy filth?"
The shotgun fired again, and the whole area around the bump deformed even more, like it was tinfoil. The table probably wouldn't be able to take another shot.
Looks like I'll have to take care of that crazy filth after all.
As the shotgun was still recharging, Driver peeked over the table and fired her ray gun, not at the bartender, but at the bottles stacked on the shelves in the wall behind him: on the impact with the blue ray, several of them exploded, the burning liquid flowing down on the counter like a fire waterfall.
The barman turned around, horrified.
"NO! NO! What have you done?! My bar!"
"Done!" she heard Zim say at the same time: the rectangular piece of the door that he had cut fell forward, on the outside of the building.
Zim ran out; she followed him on all fours, squeezing through the hole that was a perfect fit for him, but less than half her own size.
Finally, they had made it out of the space bar, running on the flat surface of the floating asteroid it was placed on. There was only one spaceship parked in the small parking lot in front of the establishment: Zim's ship, a small purple cruiser.
They had just covered half the distance between the bar and the ship, when a loud BOOM went off in the establishment; and although it couldn't be seen because of the lack of windows, the explosion was strong enough to send a few parts of the roof flying out of the asteroid's atmosphere, with black smoke leaking out of the roof: the fire had probably spread because of the alcohol and made a gas or fuel tank explode.
Both she and Zim let out a breath of relief watching the building and its owner, supposedly, burn.
"Well done. He must be super dead by now!" Zim commented.
In response, his shotgun fired through the hole in the door, the energy ball landing on the ground between them; they both jumped, alarmed and surprised.
The bartender was very much still alive, and was compressing his body through the hole, looking as livid as ever:
"YOU'RE DEAD! YOU ARE BOTH DEAD! I'LL KILL YOU IF IT'S THE LAST THING I DO!" he yelled so hard his voice cracked.
She and Zim ran again for the cruiser as the shotgun recharged.
Zim remote-opened the windshield of the ship, presumably, as far as she could see from that angle, by pressing a button embedded in his glove, and jumped into it; she slipped right after him, and curled on the seat behind him. The glass closed, and the ship activated.
"I did it! I defeated him!" Zim triumphantly boasted, "ZiM is back on his ship! Alive! And now-BWAH!" he jumped when he saw her.
"What are YOU doing on my ship?!"
Driver almost burst out laughing from the absurdity of his reaction: how he hadn't immediately noticed that they were inside the same ship together, crammed as they were, was completely beside her.
"I-"
"GET OFF MY SHIP THIS INSTANT!" he shouted right into her ear.
A shot from the shotgun hit the right side of Zim's ship, making it shake.
"Like hell I'm going outside!" she shouted back.
The AI of the ship joined in too, speaking in a robotic male voice:
"Attention. Unknown, non-Irken life form detected aboard."
"See? Not even the ship wants you inside of it! Now get out, human! Or-"
Driver pressed her gun right into his right cheek.
"Either we take off right now or we both die" she growled.
Zim froze up instantly, a terrified look on his face. Then the shotgun fired a second time, and this time the windshield cracked.
"Uh-ah-nghhh, don't mind the human! Just get me out of here!" he ordered the ship as he frantically pushed the buttons on the control panel.
The ship took flight, but an emergency alarm began beeping:
"Warning" the AI spoke, "Engine damaged. Emergency landing advised".
"Just GO!" Zim insisted, angrily pulling on a lever.
The ship raised and breached the artificial atmosphere of the asteroid. Driver looked down, to the barman: he was shaking his tentacle at them, shouting something. He tried firing his shotgun at them, but they were too far and the energy bullet dissipated into space.
Now flames were visibly poking out of the roof of the bar.
She turned to Zim again, keeping her gun inches from his face.
"Fly us as far away from here as possible, as quickly as possible" she said.
"How dare you give orders to ME?!" he growled at her.
"I mean, were you going to do anything else?"
"How dare you point a gun at me, in my own ship!" he talked over her "Arrrrghh, look at the damage! This whole mess is all your fault! Just wait until I board off!" he threatened her.
"Yeah, yeah. You can disembowel me once we land, tough guy, ok? Far from here . Now shut up and drive" she said as she reclined back on the seat and massaged her closed eyes. Two crazy aliens had come so close to killing her in the span of three hours. On a free day. This was really too much, even for her.
Zim angrily mumbled something under his breath, but obeyed her and kept flying.
After a while of flying through space, they spotted a tiny planetoid vaguely shaped like a sphere.
The ship's AI, who had become more and more insistent in its warnings, voiced its final warning:
"Emergency Shutdown imminent. Critical Engine Damage. Emergency Landing advised. Dangerous levels of Disregard for Emergency Warnings detected"
"Alright, let's land there" she pointed at the planetoid.
Zim headed towards it, draining the ship's last bits of strength; finally, the ship ungraciously plopped on the planetoid's surface.
"Is there an atmosphere?" she asked.
Zim pressed some buttons on the screen, where texts in an unknown language were displayed. Probably, Irk's language.
"Faint, but yes, there is" he answered.
"Is it breathable?"
"So it seems"
"How convenient"
"Very".
They both expressed themselves in a huffy, fake-calm way.
Zim turned off the ship, opened the windshield and jumped out to check the damage.
Driver finally managed to stretch out from her uncomfortable, curled-forward position, and she too stepped out of the cruiser.
Zim lamented at the state of his ship: black smoke rose from its engine; two black spots were present on its right side, where the barman had shot it; some kind of liquid was leaking from behind: it could clearly not take flight again in that state.
What now? she wondered, but already she knew she only had one option.
She didn't really want to do it, but she had to call her boss for help: he was the only person who could help her out of this mess.
But said mess could very well get her fired. They thankfully hadn't met any police (or worse, any bounty hunters) so far, but the barman had called someone on her: her cover could be compromised right now. Her boss' cover could be compromised right now. She had never been so reckless before, not even when she was less experienced.
She took her communicator out of a pocket in her jacket. She had to thank Zim for threatening her that morning, she guessed: if he hadn't made her wary of him, she might have never brought along the communicator OR the gun with her for what was supposed to be a quick trip to the bar.
Speaking of an angry, threatening Zim, he was currently yelling something at her; but she paid him no mind: she wanted to send the SOS message as soon as possible.
She forced herself to type: "I'm stranded on an asteroid. Attaching the coordinates. There's an Irken soldier with me. He has a small, broken down ship. Please send help" , and then sent it to him, holding her breath from the anxiety.
"HEY! I AM SPEAKING TO YOU!" Zim got closer to her and shouted even louder.
"I'm sorry, did you say something?" she turned to him.
"Yes I did! What are we supposed to do now?! My ship is ruined! We are stranded in the middle of nowhere!" he panicked, his hands flailing angrily around him.
"Calm down" she replied, "I've already asked someone for help. Have patience"
"Help? To whom?!"
"My boss. He's gonna pick up both us and your ship. Have patience" she repeated.
"Oh yeah? And when?!"
Well, he still hadn't responded so she didn't actually know if he was even able to come and pick them up.
But just as she was thinking that, she received a reply from him:
"Two hours".
Oh, thank God! she thought. But maybe, he was only heading down there to fire her. And then leave her there so that she couldn't compromise their position even more...
"Good timing. He just told me. He's coming in two hours" she smiled, trying to keep up a positive spirit.
"Nnngh! This would have never happened if you weren't there! You involved me in your criminal... stuff! And now my ship is ruined!" Zim yelled frustrated.
"Hey, how could I know he'd react that way? I thought we were on good terms..." and she really thought that: she had been genuinely surprised, and frankly hurt by the barman turning on her.
"Hmpf! Humans and their naivete! You really think you could trust a random alien found in a shady shack like that?" Zim conceitedly scoffed.
"Oh? You mean like you?" she retorted, raising an eyebrow.
"No, more like I did with you!" Zim growled.
Driver scowled at him. She took a deep breath.
The nerve of this little ingrate. How could she have ever wanted to have sex with him?
She raised her gun and drew a couple circles in the air with it, as a sort of not-so-veiled threat.
"Look, can you please cut me some slack? I'm tired of you crazy aliens assassinating my character like that"
"Stop pointing that thing at me!" he hissed; nevertheless, that seemed to work, because the conversation died there.
The two following hours passed so slowly, they seemed interminable.
At first, Driver tried taking a walk around the planetoid; but it was just a barren clump of dirt. She did note that it was comparable in size to her own rented planet: maybe with enough terraformation it could too become inhabitable. But as it was it was just a boring empty rock. Even the part of space visible from there was uninteresting. So after a while, she just came back to the cruiser, sat down, and absentmindedly played the minigames she had installed on the communicator.
For his part, Zim tried to repair the cruiser with the instruments present in his backpack for the first hour or so; but several parts needed a straight up replacement, and in the end, he just gave up and sat at the cruiser's seat, stewing in his anger and resentment, occasionally eyeing her with a menacing look.
She made it clear that she wasn't in the mood for any further discussions by keeping her gun near her, in a position where he could see it.
In the end though Zim, half out of anger half out of boredom, bitterly spat at her:
"I hope for you you have the monies to repair my ship".
She lifted her eyes up from the game she was playing.
"Excuse me?"
"The damage it sustained is your fault and you are gonna pay for it!" he whined.
"Your cruiser would have never been shot if you had just taken off without trying to get me killed" she angrily hissed.
"It is my ship! I decide who can or can't get on it!"
"Yeah, well then you should pay for it too!"
"That disgusting blob would have never shot it in the first place if it wasn't for you!" he pointed a finger at her.
"And he only found me out because I met you in the first place!" she retorted
"You are the one who approached me and lured me to her cave-house!"
"Lure? Didn't see you complain last night" she scoffed.
"You drugged me!" Zim accused her, standing up on the seat.
"You drugged yourself!" she corrected him, and then raised her voice's pitch to mockingly imitate him: "'Oh, just one more glass! I'll know when to stop!' ALSO, I remember you begging me to make out, not the other way around!"
Zim cringed at that statement, and clenched his fists.
"That's not true! I never did that! I-It's all that poison's fault!" he denied.
"Oh, is it though? They do say wine brings out one's true self..." she put down the communicator, arched her back, stretched out her crossed legs and overlapped them in a sensual pose.
"'Human, please, do suck on my face! Oh yes, let's go to your house! Oh yes, let's go to your bed!" she mocked him again.
"NO! YOU ARE A LIAR, A FILTHY LIAR!" he drew his mechanical legs out of his backpack.
Driver readily grabbed and raised her gun at the same time.
They both stayed completely still and quiet for a few moments, each with their weapon pointed at the other, their angry eyes fixed together.
"Put - those lasers -down" she commanded.
"You take back what you just said!" he hissed.
"You take back what you said before that!"
"I won't! Oh, I KNEW I should have never trusted you! Liar! All that 'I would never splat your organs on the floor' stuff was a lie! "
"Let's just say I'm always open for new ideas. And also, what a nerve. As if you never lied to me"
"What are you talking about?!"
"Th-" but before she could continue, she heard the noise of a familiar vehicle coming from her right.
Zim too caught that and looked to his left: a ship was coming their way.
The Boss' ship.
It flew into the asteroid's thin atmosphere, then stopped, hovering on the ground a few feet from them.
The door next to the driver seat opened up and the boss peeked out of the vehicle:
"Good afternoon to you. Now I don't mean to be inappropriate, but I must inquire: are you -the Irken mister over there- by any chance trying to murder my associate via laser guns?"