A/N: AND I THOUGHT CHAPTER THREE WAS BAD. THESE WERE THE WORST. GODDAMN. THINGS-
SO MANY TRIES IN VAIN ATTEMPT TO KEEP CHAPTERS 5&6 NOT DISAPPOINTING AND NOT RAMBLING NOTHINGNESS.
SO MANY REWRITES.
FUCK ME INTO A PILLAR OF OVERWORKED, UNDER-RESTED MASOCHISTIC AGONIZED CUM BECAUSE I HATED WRITING THIS CHRIST ALMIGHTY FUCKING SHIT I HAD TO BALANCE IT WITH MOUNTAINS OF SCHOOLWORK GAZ IS HARD TO WRITE WELL TOO FUCK, FUCK FUUUUUCK
In other words, please enjoy, my plucky readers. 83 After this, I think I will go enjoy the first full sleep-cycle I've had in the entire month…
We're getting some new faces in the review's section! :3 Welcome aboard, new readers!
I decided I didn't like my Keef design in chapter 3, so he's back to being a total half-pint. Still one with a shitty coat, though, heh. …Heh… …Well, in the words of best-character Dib; "Sorry, everyone!" because who doesn't love sudden changes from nowhere, ammiright? Right. 'Course I'm right, you all love me. Also I decided to change the title of Chapter 4 from Blind Alley to Spectrum Harvest, in reference to Dark Harvest for reasons I figure are pretty obvious. :D
In retrospect, I guess you can read this chapter as having one-sided GaGR undertones…? Head's up…? I dunno. I think it's canon GIR has a little crush on Gaz, so I don't think it really matters. This chapter didn't want me to write it, but fuck. I'm sleep-deprived and emotionally unbalanced and here you all go. At least I've gotten through this and can work on the cooler shit that comes later. …I'm having a bad time right now. ;^;
…Well, enough chatter. To the plot!
I am Zim I am Zim I am Zim I am
The meaning of this mantra was crumbling.
Air broke in his throat. It'd fracture within the center and try to explode out the cocooning flesh, but walls held it all in.
All his words tumbled into one another up and down his larynx. Jumbled. Merged. Writhing and mad and swallowed between chin and breastbone like locusts.
Each of the countless bricks slicing through his brain spaced aspects of himself further and further apart, marooning even these trapped words from their meanings. Similar to insects with their wings plucked off, and children with their wonder-filled eyes tugged from their sockets, he was recreated. The new him was one built lost, and left to perish within a lightless void, empty of purpose and phenomenon as electricity tore him anew. As his very soul, mined from his pores.
Thought was the first to be disabled. Directives slammed into one another within his PAK, codes interlacing and hurtling off in the mad directions. He was suspended in the tide, squished under functions that'd twisted into things far more monstrous than before. Things beyond his comprehension. Things that made sure he couldn't comprehend anymore. The Irken machine – proud, mechanical, and in the end a weapon. Wires wreathed around common sense and anything resembling decency was lost in a rush to survive. In a rush to conform. It knew better how to make the pain stop, it'd been preprogrammed with the information. Suppress. Stay. BITE! Lunge! SIT!
Everything was falling away. The pain was dulling, so was the world, and so was Zim.
And in this swathing haze, of electricity tearing him apart and atoms falling away from each other, the squeezing sensation around his bones almost felt pleasant…
…Like the hug of a dear, trustworthy friend…
Zim's Base, 3:42 AM
One hour before civilian harvest.
The Computer wasn't sure what to expect when the door to the home had been kicked down. Part of him wondered why the Master would've returned after pretty much just departing, but immediate scans proved this assumption false. For starters, this wasn't an encoded Irken at all. This was a human girl.
This child's mouth was downcast, and her hair curved oddly around her head. It was a peculiar magenta, angular, with simple toque cupping the crown. A bomber jacket wreathed her in black, accompanied by similarly shaded jeans, a pair of lace-up combat boots and a clenched pair of fists. A skull spread along the hat's side, and in her hands rested an experienced, nail-ridden baseball bat.
A search in his databanks brought up the brief profile of Gazlene Membrane – the words "Dib's sister" and "scary" were immediately printed in bright bold, along with the words "detestable" and "stay away". GIR, surprisingly, also had a side report filed under her in his databanks, probably the only document the robot had ever done in its life, which had pasta noodles and glitter smearing it quite officially. The only legible word down was gelato. Naturally the Computer was at a bit of a loss at how to handle the situation of a 4''8, silhouetted child occupying the doorframe, but preprogrammed Irken law ordered him to at least try.
"UH… HI?" he asked with some hesitation, "CAN I… HELP YOU?"
AIs were not encoded with any need for faith. They were aware of their disposable nature and were built to accept that they'd perish someday.
But then this "Gaz" creature opened her eyes.
Nothing short of absolute death rolled about in those tawny irises. An inferno of perfectly bred hatred and malice, all engineered deliberately to strike fear within any life form. It was like the energy in his circuits fluctuated – trying to escape the harrowing scrutiny travelling his walls. Somewhere, some measly, defective byte roaming through his artificial consciousness prayed to non-existent cyber deity for safety. Safety that he'd survive this happenstance, and go the rest of his life without meeting that glare again.
He deleted this byte immediately, of course. But it was troubling that she'd summoned it in the first place.
…Oh Irk. Why him? Was scrolling through the mazes of boring information within Membrane Science's databanks in pursuit of the absolute-impossible-stupid that was 'necromancy' – which had led him through several dumb ads until he'd rather accidentally found encrypted reports within the city mall, which were frustrating to decode by themselves – not enough? How about having to talk to his master for over five minutes? Not to mention that once that conversation was over, he'd had to finish sealing a human parasite back together, and provide a portion of his power to keeping that parasite from decaying any further. And now the brood of said human parasite had showed up like the entropic grim reaper itself…? …Why was Computer's life so awful? Nobody knew what it was like to be him. Nobody.
Though she'd returned to squinting, purple-haired scary girl from hell still hadn't answered, either. Nothing unsettling about that, of course...
"…UM," his speakers started again, "YOU'RE NOT RESPON-"
"Where is Dib," her voice crawled through the house.
Silence.
Then GIR broke out from the TV.
Squealing and covered with the innards of their primitive kin, the dog-suit-donned SIR zoomed right over to the stranger and held her leg in a choke grip.
"DID'JA SEEEEE MY BIG ENTRANCE!? I'M GONNA GO TO TH' OLYMPICS THIS YEAR! BUST OUTTA ALL THE TEE-VEES. YOU COMIN' TOO, RIGHT?!" he piped up, looking to her with joy, "You and me's gonna fly all day and play with other kids and-!"
Gaz kicked GIR to the other side of the room.
"Don't touch me," she hissed, "Dib's. Missing. His camera, and a busted car covered in his blood outside are outside. I don't know what you guys did with my brother, but Dad's gonna be home soon, and I'm not going to spend two hours with him rushing around the city looking for his stupid head when Zim's probably experimenting on it right now. You have him, right? …Actually, scratch that. I KNOW you have him. Tell me where Zim put him right now, or I'll send you both to android hell."
GIR gave a wide grin, ignoring the fact his arm was sparking on the ground beside him. The threat apparently held no power over the criminally insane. "Aw, Dib? He's not doin' good. He's sleeping real snug like a bug in his own bloated jelly-dermis down th' stairs."
Gaz cracked an eye open. "…What?"
"He and that metal pony became beeeeest friends forever!" continued GIR, getting up to approach the sparking limb, "A big goat-thingy wanted to get 'em married so he whipped it at his guts. Pony was mad Dib didn't have a wedding ring, though, so it crushed all his insides and Zim was mad Dib was cheatin' on both of 'em with DEATH, so now he's going off to kill the goat pastor and get Dib's soul back. It's all at the mall!"
"HE'S… KIND OF RIGHT IN A TWISTED WAY?" hesitantly affirmed the Computer, who had summoned some cables from the ceiling to grasp and repair the SIR before he could devour his fallen appendage, "ALTHOUGH, I SHOULD POINT OUT THAT A CAR HOLDS NO REAL RELATIONSHIP TO EQUINE LIFEFORMS, UNLESS ONE IS DISCUSSING THEIR REPLACEMENT AS HUMANITY'S PRIMARY MODE OF TRANSPORTATION. ALSO, CALLING THE PERPETRATOR A GOAT IS SOMEWHAT RASH, AS IT WAS BIPEDAL IN NATURE AND WELL EXCEEDING NORMAL HUMAN HEIGHT, DESPITE ITS SIMILARITIES. …OH. AND YOUR BROOD'S STILL IN THE FRESH STAGE, NOT THE BLOAT. HE SHOULDN'T DECOMPOSE ANYMORE EITHER, AS HIS CORPSE IS IN STASIS RIGHT NOW."
Gaz's hands unfastened. As though her palms and throat were connected by a seesaw, the child's throat squeezed around her current inhale instead.
"What…" a small pause and normal delivery followed, "What do you mean?"
Her voice was curiously lacking hostility in this simple question. It was almost casual, but there was something lurking under it that the interface couldn't decipher. Curiously, the human's eyes were wide open again, but…
The Computer re-ran the data from earlier, noting massive inconsistencies. …How odd.
Where'd all that scariness go? All that crafted malevolence wasn't apparent now. They were just… Eyes. Brown human eyes. Ones that just kept subtly growing in width and filling with something dry and desolate.
"…DIB MEMBRANE IS VERY DEAD. HE WAS CRUSHED BY THAT CAR OUTSIDE AND LOST VITAL SIGNS BEFORE BEING BROUGHT INSIDE," the AI slowly explained, "…YOU'RE… NOT UPSET BY THIS, ARE YOU? ZIM IS GOING TO GET REVENGE ON HIS BEHALF AND TO RESSURECT HIM IF THAT MAKES YOU FEEL ANY BETTER."
It didn't seem like this made her 'feel better'. If anything, it seemed to the Computer's scanners like she felt worse.
For an oddly long time, Gaz stood quite still. Unlike GIR, who whined away at pain of having his arm reattached, she just didn't budge. The Computer, of course, was just a second hand source and had GIR taking most of its attention, but it could detect her body language. And something definitely seemed to tense inside her. Something that forced her ribs to clench deeper in, and her limbs to go slack. Something that caused her skin to pale and her eyes to widen. Like a slew of snares going off under her skin, corralling everything under her black attire to choke in on itself. She just stared head on, into some patch of the wall, where something horrible was unfolding only she could comprehend.
In a way, it was unnerving how plainly the following words left her.
"He's dead."
The Computer carefully lowered the SIR to the floor (who wailed away on the inability to consume his own arm) and addressed the foreign body. "CORRECT."
"My brother DIED here. Right on your doorstep. And you didn't stop it," she spoke lowly, "And now, Zim… ZIM of all people's gonna try and bring him back like some Frankenstein rip-off."
"YES. WELL…" the Computer said, "FRANKENSTEIN WOULD NOT BE ACCURATE. HIS CURRENT STRATEGY SEEMS TO BE MODIFIED ZOMBIFICATION LIKE YOU HUMANS HAVE IN YOUR MALL."
"Wait. We have zombies in the mall?" she suddenly parroted, disbelief grasping her.
"H-HEY, DON'T ASK ME. I'M AN OUTDATED IRKEN AI, NOT AN EARTHENOID CIVILIAN…"
She considered this for a minute, looking to one boot and then the other. The Computer detected a spike in her emotional levels, something of great repressed anger and… Fear? ...No, couldn't be.
"…Maybe…" she muttered to no one in particular. Her expression went back to a poker face, and then she was heading out the door. The Computer wasn't sure what she meant, and wasn't sure if he liked the tone.
"UH, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"
"I have to see this," she said, simply. She ruffled her jacket down and started down the walkway, "Zim CAN'T mess this up…"
"WAAAAAIIIITTTTTT PRETTY LADY!" GIR cried, running over with what appeared to be a big, full, smiley-faced sack of… Stuff, "It's dangerous to go alone! Take 'dis!"
The bag opened, and if Gaz's expression to go by, she'd never seen as many grenades or miniature pistols gathered in one place at once in real life before.
"…Thanks?" she offered, kneeling to pack several under her bomber jacket. GIR just rolled through the weapon pile like it was made of pillows.
"HAPPY JINGLE DAY!" he cheered, throwing a bunch in his head. "NOW LET'S GO PLAY COW-JUMPING LIKE IN DA BOOKS!"
"Wha-"
Gaz didn't have any time to react. The SIR had grabbed her by the combat boots and whipped her into the air to spin for a moment. Right before she landed, his feet exploded in lines of flame, snaring his nubby arms around her waist and propelling the both of them out the door, down the street and through the sky. Down the whole block, their shrieking rung out, before fading into obscurity within the dark as they got further and further away.
All the while, the Computer sighed. Finally, peace.
(-)
GIR sang songs all through the flight while the girl dangled in his arms. She'd kicked and yelled at first, but despite her struggling and the frigid downpour, the robot was surprisingly dead-set on his course to the local mall, and soon enough she'd calmed down.
Well, at least on the surface.
It probably came as no surprise, but Gaz was actually quite furious deep inside.
The youngest Membrane felt the sky rip past and all the snow bellowing down on their bodies. It looked even worse in the clouds above, but thankfully Zim's dumb robot kept close to the rooftops and kept from touching anywhere sensitive. As the towers of concrete sped past underfoot, the girl half-listened to the storm of GIR's words while she contemplated what'd become of her world.
It was no secret that Gazlene appreciated routine. Her shell was well-crafted, and her limits didn't take kindly to any sort of pushing. New things – especially bad new things – threatened her patience like a match to the very substance she was named after. Unlike the boys of her home, her mind didn't devour books. It didn't seek information to chew. It didn't look for some new breakthrough, nor did it seek attention from the rest of society. It just crafted a thought pattern every once and a while, dripped with cynicism, and absorbed pixels. At times it busied itself with things like schoolwork, but it was usually found looking through more fictional landscapes to line the walls of its shell with. Drinking the facts she learned through mild experiences, sitting with her demons within the dark for hours on end uninterrupted, ingesting carbohydrates like no tomorrow while fuming internally about the world. Escaping to some better place inside her walls.
So unlike her brother.
Dib.
Now, pure hate was an admittedly poor word choice for something as… Complicated, as the sibling's relationship. She did hate Dib. She hated his voice, and how it broke through her dreams like a retarded toddler through a puddle. She hated the way he pushed his views on everyone and refused to listen to reason. She hated that he put himself in harm's way to appease the blithering masses, and how he expected sympathy for his inability to learn that this only brought scorn. She hated how he could rush out of bed every morning and screech about his passions for Earth all the way to school while she tried to catch extra sleep. Hated how he'd senselessly poke and peel at every brick she'd stacked without ever stopping to notice how livid this made her. For this? Hate. Hate.
He'd finally swallowed the truth of her sentiment along with the Shadow Hog's shit last year. By this point, she was certain, he hated her too. At best, these days, she'd describe their relationship as two complacent fish in their father's tank. Swimming in their respective corners, ignorant to the other's worlds, much unlike their formative years.
And yet.
And yet despite all this, every now and then, there'd be a cartoon on television. And their commentary would quite funny when put together. Sometimes there'd be a song on the radio she'd tap her feet to, and across the house, if she strained, she could hear him tapping along too. At times Dib would earnestly say something funny or thoughtful. And sometimes he held that sentiment for things she said.
These were very rare occasions. But it was in them that the complications set in.
...All this was striking far too close to home for her liking. Funny, how a simple, borderline laughable event could tear everything you had out right out of you like a worthless dandelion, wasn't it?
…What was that stage of grief called, where you felt desolate of strong emotion, knew and consciously accepted the person had gone, but still expected to see them when you went home…?
Would she just have to do that with two people, now…?
…Didn't matter.
Not a bit.
Gaz hated Dib, but risking to bring him back as a supposedly rapid, flesh eating abomination? Mindlessly devouring flesh and mindlessly decomposing in on himself in a hell without release?
To be honest, aside from taking obligatory revenge, she wasn't really sure what she'd let Zim do.
(-)
Shooting over a mess of police cars (look at the stupid fucking officers, ignoring the clearly flailing human silhouette to make wishes), Zim's robot sputtered his rockets and sent them both tumbling across the lot.
"HANG ON!" he chirped upon letting her go.
Yeah. That was the logic she had to deal with. Well, wind stabbed through her and down the girl went.
She cursed while her skeleton bumped and jutted along the snowbanks without any grace. Flakes caught in her lashes and spread white patches along her vision, and away she rolled before tumbling right through the front doors of the ruined mall with a disgraceful series of thuds. She spat out snow and rubbed her sore shoulders, but the child was never one to wine, so up she shakily stood.
GIR crashed into the back of her skull and knocked them both over again.
The gamer groaned as those metal noodle-arms fastened around her waist again. Copper-tasting fluid spotted the ridge of her cheek from where it'd impacted with the smooth floor, smothered with trash as it reflected obnoxiously loud, thudding music that bounced everywhere.
Knock-knock, Gaz. It's anger. The grandest emotion of all. It's gonna completely murder everyone in enough strikes. Strike two.
"Please put all left over peanuts in mah head," chirped the SIR, who (with surprising care) maneuvered himself to prop her up into a sitting position.
Dazed and growling, Gaz pushed GIR aside and looked to find no less than forty people standing around her in varying degrees of intoxication within the (thoroughly trashed) lobby. Staggering, hollering, and mad with stupidity, they plunged their feet down in tune with the beat. The mall's interior looked even worse than the outside. Stores were virtually pissed on, various vending sectors had their gates torn down, filled with variously-sized, filthy people roaming about in glaring neon lighting. They were everywhere, pushing, tripping, walking. Some waved hello, but most resumed grinding and chanting about anarchy and being 'born again partiers' and such nonsense.
Strangely enough, the plaza's sunroof had been destroyed, too, left with a slab of metal that rested over it instead. A fraction of the girl - the tiny piece that despite everything still continued to beat - briefly considered that the managers finally caught on that layering three digits worth of glass over each other under direct sunlight was a stupid plan. …But, intuition told her this probably wasn't the case.
After all, embedded into the steel were what looked to be alchemic circles analogous to the ones scattered through the pages of Dib's "spell books", crafted in scratches. When were those ever trendy?
Aimlessly, she maneuvered the bodies with a tottering GIR at her side. Where the hell would she even begin to look for the supposed zombie area …? People shoved on past, herds of them. Where was Zim? How would she even begin to find him in this mess…?!
"Where we goin'?" asked the robot, now of all times over the obnoxious club theme, "Wanna stop for gondola tacos? They're meat boats you can eat with a mustache!"
She growled as the pain within her skull swelled, wondering why she hadn't totally destroyed the faulty gizmo yet. "Look," she hissed, "I'm trying to find something like a staff member to give me information, and you've already caused me a headache, so why don't you just-"
"Like dat lady?" GIR pointed to a woman lounging at a bench by a 'you are here' sign.
The female's hair was dyed pink and her face held an army of bloated red bumps. What was cause for interest, however, was the head security uniform draped over her figure. Now, clearly, Slab's uniform wouldn't have fitted her slim physique in the least, but anybody could've pointed out that it was the same model – just custom-tailored. And as a frequent customer, this was raising all kinds of questions for the gamer. Gaz glanced to GIR, who beamed up at her, and before she could provide any instructions he zipped his lips shut as if to say he'd remain silent throughout the whole talk.
Huh.
Anger… Decreasing? …Strike one, now?
Okay, so maybe she wouldn't utterly obliterate Zim's little minion. Yet. She acknowledged the robot with a small nod and an awkward head-pat(GIR tried to cheer in response with his mouth clamped shut… Which was honestly outrageously precious, stupid positive emotions), and afterwards approached the staff member casually.
"Yo, like, welcome to the party, sweetie!" sung the female upon noting her presence, "We got…! Stuff…! HEEERRRRREEEE!" she raised her arms over extra-enthusiastically, "You'll like, have a super-special GOOD time here! Like, all these guys!"
Her voice was virtually a droning, effeminate buzz saw – forever tearing through the atmosphere and forever serrating the gamer's patience. Gaz struggled to keep her fists still. She didn't have time for this, dammit...
"Look, do you know where your supervisor is?" the girl asked through grit teeth.
The guard smiled. "Oh, DO I?! Heh, of course I do, silly-billy! Our supervisor, Mr. Downs, is a swell guy - a GREAT guy! …He totally died of overdose two days ago," she explained, "Like, when he found out he couldn't stop the party and that HIS supervisors were coming to check on us soon… Boosh. Awesome drugs. Took too many. It was sick. We took pictures! …Yeah, that was in poor taste, wasn't it? Aw well, I'm too stoned to care about anything right now. I'll probably feel like, totally inhuman later…"
Pfft. Inhuman. Try feeling like that since birth, bitch. …Well, wasn't this just great?
"Just… What HAPPENED here?" the youngest Membrane asked, gesturing to the chaos, "Wasn't the old security chief an ex-military who arrested people for sticking gum under tables? How'd he let a mess like this happen?"
The guard raised a studded eyebrow, still jittering excitedly where she sat. "Huh? You, like, seriously don't know…? Everybody knows!" she leaned in a little, "We-hell… I'm not supposed to, like, tell anybody the juicy details, but I'm high as all get out, and you're a cutie. See sweetie, over the last couple months, like, y'know golden boy Rankle? Old Security head? Took the job way too seriously? …He'd been really slacking at his job, so he got laid off~! Freaky, right?"
Rankle? Gaz had to take a step back at that. She'd heard plenty of stories about the lead officer – after all, how couldn't anyone (spare perhaps Dib, who quite disliked the mall and only entered when absolutely necessary. Usually without telling anybody, but then again, she usually wasn't listening to anything he ever said, so perhaps she was a bad judge) not know about him? Wasn't this the guy who sold his own house to endorse the Mall with extra funding, who never left the building ever, who slept standing with both eyes open while saluting in front of the camera feeds? How could someone like that be fired for slacking?
"What do you mean by THAT?" she asked, "Didn't he live and breathe this place?"
"That's totally what we thought, too!" the guard glanced shyly to the side, "Okay, so, like, the official story is, he'd only been fired for acting weird, like, a few weeks ago. But he was getting REALLY weird months before even that. He kept going down to the tunnels near the zombie labs we were commissioned to work on by those weirdos at… Hah, I can't remember their names. But they're weird, weird government guys, y'know? I'm not supposed to like, know about 'em, but I, like, love hacking stuff… They still never found out it was me… Heh," she giggled, as though she hadn't just admitted to committing a felony, "…And when he wasn't down there, he was in his office, but he wouldn't come out for days! We don't know what he was looking for, but some trespassers actually slipped past him because they weren't concerning enough! Rankle said that! Can you believe it?! He just kept... Looking."
"Looking for what?"
"...Ooo, I'm not supposed to tell ya, but... ...For this weird monster thing," hushed the guard, "Said it was this… Shadow who haunted him. Had to stop her or something. I don't know. Crazy, right...? We were trying to get him on anti-psychotics, and a few weeks ago, when the supervisor was supposed to mail in the results for that month of testing, everything down there was gone, including all the zombies, AND shortly after, so was Rankle! Just their clothes, claw marks, bullet shells, and all this crazy dust were left. Spooky, right? And adding to that, there're all these weird circles scratched in all over the place. Safety says rats did it, but don't they look weird? Plus, the cameras keep getting weird even when we replace them, and none of the feeds catch anything but… Oh, man, I can't even describe it. It's wicked weird red stuff, like, right?"
Before Gaz could add anything onto this the guard (Gaz decided to call her Pinky) kept talking.
"Also, this PAR-TAY, was totally my move," she cheered, "See, the mall has like everything anyone could eeeeeeever waaaant! So, like, one like night some kids started coming in and wouldn't listen when I like, said 'don't come in'! – because my attendance, I took Rankle's job, y'see – and then, like, those little delightful FUCKS went and told their parents coming in here was easy and like no one wants to pay for stuff so… Part-tay-central mall totally happened, and now we have like fifty hundred families who won't ever leeeaave!" she stared off to nothing for a minute. And another. She started humming. Then she began speaking again. "Oh yeah, I have to tell you… That we're like, clooooosed, so come back, like, tomorroooow, or like whatever! …Sorry, I gotta say that or I'll lose my job…"
Gaz shook her head. "Look, earlier, that information was actually kind of interesting. Do you know where the labs actually are?" she questioned, "And did you see a green kid come through? I think he's gonna try stealing your zombie formula. Also, that monster thing's probably real and it killed my brother. Just to let you know."
"Aww, they're even letting LITTLE dudes take drugs now? Cute! Learn the magic early, girl…! …Oh. Oh, and yeah," Pinky nodded, "There's like totally a whole bunch of secret passageways to the laaab... Off the top of my head, you could try Floor 66, which isn't too bad, but the one in the Security office is probably the fastest way down, since it's got an elevator straight to the actual lab. Oh, and if you graffiti guy's junk the screens, don't tell my boss it was me, okay? ...And I didn't see a green kid. Sorry. And sorry about your brother, too. Who was he again?"
"It's not important," the girl had enough information. She didn't want to muse deeply over Dib's passing juuust quite yet... "Thanks," the macabre kid muttered, surprised the encounter had gone alright.
GIR watched her come over from where he'd been standing silent ten feet away, and flapped his black arms in anticipation. Gaz was part-way tempted to decrease her speed, just to see how long the machine could go and how fast his arms could fly, but she thought better of it.
Instead, she poked his forehead and nodded to move forward. "C'mon, robot. I got us a lead."
Before she could head out, however, the guard spoke up.
"Oh, and little kid?" she called, an uncomfortable look on her face, "Careful. It's reeeaaaally… Reeeaaaally creepy in there."
A/N: THIS CHAPTER WAS SO FUCKING BORING COMPARED TO THE LAST AND I'M SORRY BUT I NEEDED TO ADD GAZ INTO THE MIX AND IT WAS HAAAARD TO KEEP THIS INTERESTING. 8-8 THANKS FOR READING.