A/N: I forgot to do my linebreaks last chapter. I was all..."SHIT!" My bad, guys. I hate re-uploading.
By the way, guys, my mind is in, like, hyperspeed. There is so much stuff occuring to me that wasn't in the planning. I'm all..."Stick to the planning...BUT WAIT! I LIKE THIS IDEA!"

The destruction met Zim's standards. In fact, it might have surpassed.

The alien stood, wide-eyed, in what had once been his classroom. The roof had been completely obliterated, leaving half-walls to seperate classrooms, burned and crumbled, bits of plaster littering the ground. The desks had been slammed into one corner, many cracked in half or missing legs. The ones farthest from the wall were scorched a charcoal black on the outer edge. Most likely they had been shot at by an Irken weapon; the burnt desks turning into a noble shield for their comrades. The various decorations around the room had been obliterated. Tiny pieces of construction paper lay amongst shards of glass from the shattered windows. It was strangely quiet without the insane voice of the Dib-human, hateful and--

"Give me one good reason I shouldn't kill you right now," Hissed a voice rather similar to the one he'd been imagining. Zim could feel a cool blade pressing to the back of his neck. The Irken, knowing better than to play, slowly turned about.

Harsh amber eyes were staring him down, narrowed behind a pair of damaged old glasses. The teen was still wearing a trademark trenchcoat, which fluttered around his frame. The scythe had grown longer, jagged and ebony.The only real peculiarity was the fact that the blade extended from Dib's elbow, and silver was visible on the rest of the member, extending to the shoulder. The metal also replaced what had once been three fingers on his left hand. There was scar tissue surrounding where skin met metal. Was it really possible that he'd had so much metal grafted to his skin? What had happened to the boy?

"Well?" He snarled, unwavering in his tone.

A smattering of people had surrounded the frozen pair, on the outer edges of the classroom. Zim didn't dare turn his head to see them, but his antennae perked up at their noise. He tried to form the words to explain his prescence to Dib. "D-Dib-worm," he stammered, swallowing hard and feeling the tip of the blade come closer. "Zim had nothing to do with the invasion. I was taken as a prisoner of war." Dib seemed to hesitate, blade lowering the most unnoticable amount.

"Why?" The teenager questioned, still staring him down.

Zim swallowed again, bringing his gaze to the ground. Damn human couldn't have kept out of that. Softly, he mumbled, "I was disgraced because I destroyed Operation Impending Doom One. That's why when you studied the Irken documents, invasions always had a character after them. They tried to get rid of me when they sent me to Earth, and when they saw that I'd actually found an inhabitable planet..." He could feel the other's scrutinizing glare and he could feel his pulse rush in his ears, terrified that he was about to have his throat slit as soon as he escaped his hellhole. There were several silent moments, heart beating painfully loud, before Dib made his final decision.

"He's fine," Dib stated to the group, withdrawing his blade. Zim massaged his neck, glancing around at the people near him. Their names rushed back at him:

"Zita, don't you think I know Zim at this point? Zim would never, ever admit that he screwed up back on Irk if he still had his ego left to him," He replied coolly. "If he wants--" His eyes flickered back to Zim. "Then he can stay with us, but under strict supervision. I haven't just forgotten what happened, but he's the enemy of our enemy, and he probably knows the most about Irk here." The teen gazed around as his tattered looking collections of survivors. "Does anyone have an objection to that?"

The Letter M seemed to hesitate, leaving the room silent for a moment, before quietly asking, "Is it worth the risk of the Armada coming here?"

The amber-eyed boy looked him head on. "He's still an Earth survivor, so he's worth it as much as the rest of us are." The words seemed to finalize it, although there were some doubtful expressions. "Everyone, go back underground." His command was calm but controlling; the group seemed to obey it at once, flipping open trapdoors to the once-feared underground classrooms. It was so ironic, that something once so feared by the students was now their safe haven.

A tall, dark-haired man, elder to the rest of the refugees, paused at the entrance, eyes darting back to Dib as though he wanted to say something before he left, but thought the better of it and climbed into the trapdoor, climbing out of sight.

Now that the two of them were alone, they stared at each other, looking at their former enemy's face. They were both so worn out, so...damaged. Hell, Dib was missing body parts. That's Zim's faulit, The alien noted miserably. "Dib..." There was no honorific, for once. "Your arm and your fingers--"

"--were destroyed by the Armada in their initial attack," The teen completed, voice devoid of emotion in a rather frightening way. "I don't know if this is some kind of plan, or if you're serious, but I'm going to say this: do not screw this up and do not think you're going to get away with anything." His partially metallic hand yanked open the trapdoor, standing by and waiting for the alien he'd once so despised to enter his current home

A/N: I hope no one thought that I was trying to do an FMA ripoff on Dib. The thought process was more that I had an idea in my head of Dib with a blade to Zim's throat, but it seemed...weird to give Dib a bladed instrument, then I got all these ideas. When I was writing it, I was like, 'OH SHIT HE HAS A METAL ARM'.