A/N: Howdy folks! Yup, this one actually comes to you on time, for once. Did everyone enjoy the wierd Dib/Vic skew on perception? I hope so, because it's going to continue for a while. This story has officially become an epic, which is really just my way of saying I know where the story is going to go from here on out and it's a long way to go. Up until this point, I really had no plans as far as Dib's future is concerned, but I think I understand what I was trying to do in the first place.
Let's just say fans of C.J. Cherryh will be quite pleased, if I pull this off.
That being said, I warn you guys, this one comes at you with very little editing. I should probably sit on it and read it again later when I'm not so tired and have had a chance to forget exactly what I've written here, but that would mean a delay, and I don't think you guys would appreciate that much, so please, bear with me. I'll fix the errors as we go.
Questions were raised as to Dib's apparent tallness, despite malnutrition. While it IS true that malnutrition stunts growth, Dib comes from a line of extremely tall people (look at his father). He wasn't ever really all that thick to begin with... so now he's like a scarecrow. This is just an excuse really, he shouldn't be that tall, but I can't picture him as that short as an adult. Now I've read several different accounts that have the Tallest as being anywhere from 6 to 12 feet in height, which doesn't sound accurate to me at all (unless I missed some vital statistic thing put out by Jhonen himself). When one is called the Tallest, it stands to reason that one is going to be fucking TALL, but bear in mind people that we are talking about a species who's average height is like 4 feet. With Zim himself coming in at an estimated 3 feet or so, and Dib at age 12 at about 4'5" or so that would put the Tallest in my story at about 6'5". Dib as he is now is probably 6'1", still shorter than the Tallest but far taller than the average Irken (and as Vic so delicately put it, LOOMING).
If you're wondering how he got tall without much food, and other science facts, just repeat to yourself, it's just a fanfic, I should really just relax.
Not to mention you're talking about a series that regularly bitchslaps the laws of physics like a pimp with a recalcitrant five dollar whore.
Now with you gawking at that visual image, I thumb my nose at you and laugh insanely as I flee into the sweet, sweet all concealing darkness of the internet.
Ah crap, I forgot my grandpa read this crap of mine.
Oh well, my pops was in the Navy too, he'll understand.
Additionally, I was a little saddened that no one mentioned my homage to a particular Sci-Fi series that Jhonen himself was particularly fond of. If anyone spots the movie reference in the last chapter (and it's pretty damn blatant, lemme tell yoU) that I'm speaking of, and can tell me exactly what movie and what it is, I'll give you a cool point.
Cool points are redeemable for absolutely nothing of value, they are just cool.
Hence the name.
Now that I've completely underwhelmed you, please, enjoy the show.
"Are you the future, or are you the past? Have you been chosen, or are you the last? The pictures were sent, they seem so unreal. Now I'm made of plastic, wire and steel. Follow for now and follow for this, cause everybody follows for nothing at all! Supernova, your supernova... Supernova goes pop... Supernova, you think it's over, but supernova don't stop..." -Powerman 5000, Supernova Goes Pop
So there I was, caught dead-to-rights, caught with my pants down, caught with my hand in the cookie jar, or whatever other metaphor you wish to use for someone who's about to be royally fucked with a laser rifle.
Though of course, you know that I survived. I mean, you could hardly be reading this if I hadn't done something amazing.
Or, you know... SOMETHING anyway.
Actually, I didn't really DO anything. It was kinda sad really. I attribute it to being the only human the gods had left to look after.
Or fuck with, you choice the option which best suits you.
Some of you are probably thinking the alien who's "virtue" (do Irken's HAVE virtue?) I so diligently saved is the one responsible for my continued survival. You're wrong, but I agree... it would have been nice. No, her entire reaction during the next critical few seconds was to stare unblinkingly like a deer caught in the headlights.
So much for chivalry.
Nope, what saved me was pure, dumb, stinking, simple, doo-dah, clueless, luck.
Or maybe not so lucky. I mean, if I had received a laser to the brain-pan, all the unhappy thoughts would have gone away in a puff of steam, I would have been dead before my neurons know what happened to me.
Still, good or bad, What happened to me next certainly was a lucky coincidence.
On the one hand, I got to live another day.
On the other, it hurt like fucking hell.
The laser rifle that the Irken soldier held was a different model from the one that I held, which fired coherant beams of light (all the better to track you with, my dearie). This particular laser rifle had no such hinderance, meaning that the first indication I had that I had been shot was the instantaneous flash of vapor from superheated rain drops in the beam's path, and more pertinant to me, the agonizing pain in my right shoulder. I felt no impact, no jolting shock, just sudden indescribably hot agony in my shoulder. My hand seized up and became numb causing me to drop my laser rifle, and I doubled up over the pain, spinning away from the Irken with his deadly weapon.
Now comes the fun part.
See, the Irken in question had fired the weapon one handed in a strafing motion that should have cut me in half, but succeeded in only winging me. Having no recoil to speak of, the Irken was still hindered by the unwieldy nature of his shooting stance, since one of the hands needed to stabalize the heavy (for him) weapon was currently holding his goo in. It took him a fraction of a second longer than usual to correct his aim and strafe back at me, which still would have been far faster than I could have reacted.
Voluntarily.
However, by instinctively curling around the pain, I neglected to take note of the precarious nature of my footing, and since it was raining, grease and metal with Dib's ass makes a decidedly slippery combination. I slid backwards about ten feet down a slope, then spun bruisingly off the mounded trash and came to rest face down in the nastiest pile of unidentifable soft stuff I have ever smelled.
Of course part of that might have been the sickly sweet, slightly burnt pork scent coming from my shoulder, but I wasn't thinking about that at the moment.
Especially since I hadn't had pork or meat of any kinda in a long time, and it... naw. Not gonna think about that one.
I was hurt. Hurt bad. God that fucking hurt. I couldn't move my right arm, the bastard felt like it was gonna fall off, and I made the mistake of trying to pick myself up by bracing with both hands.
Mistake. Nearly passed out. Let's... NOT do that again, shall we?
I can't afford to lie here, I've gotta move, goddamn it!
I have no choice. Not if I want to live.
Amazingly... I DO want to live.
I'll analyze why later. For now, I pick my ass up and make myself comfortingly scarce.
I decide to double back and see what they're up to. Knowing what your enemy is doing to kill you is always a good thing.
I am frozen in shock. I cannot move.
Commander Tig swings his weapon wildly, firing with complete abandon in the direction of the alien. I cannot see the shots being fired, it is not a particle laser, nor has it been set in the "tracer" coherant mode of fire, the Commander prefering the "Stealth" utility function. I see the effects on the liquid pouring down and the alien, who convulses violently then disappears out of sight so suddenly that for a moment, my shocked brain assumes that he has vaporized.
I do not understand any of this. Granted this is war, granted that I have seen battle before, but it was always so ordered, so... surgical. This is chaos, this is madness. It is primal, alien and hot, these strange emotions, hatred tearing like savage beasts through my teammate's every action. This THING is so anathema to them, so WRONG, in its tallness and its refusal to fight out in the open, its refusal to cower, to show fear, in its PURE lethal cunning, that it MUST be destroyed, AT ALL COSTS. I admit, I am not immune to these feelings. I have been taught, indeed, I have learned as rote, that I am a part of a race superior to all others. True, I am a lowly Medical Drone, lower even than the cooks who slave away in the Massive's galleys, but I am still higher on an inconceivable scale of magnitude to any filthy non-Irken.
That it... for lack of a better word, DEALT with us so easily...
I should have said it was maddening, I should have said it was infuriating.
That is what I was THINKING, however. Not what I was FEELING.
It SCARED me. I am very small in this universe, and there are things out there, things that are so very big, and...
A sudden sharp pain in my head snaps me back into focus. Commander Tig is speaking to me.
Correction, he is speaking AT me.
"M.D. Vic, are you injured?" He asks. For a moment, I mistake his tone for concern.
I should know better by now, I really should.
"I-I am fine... Commander, I just-"
"Then STOP lazing about and follow me, idiot! We have to find that thing! We have to KILL it!"
"But sir... you are injured. I have to treat-"
He, ever the brash Irken soldier, would have none of this.
"I have no time for your fussing, Drone! Just follow me, and if you SEE it, SHOOT it!" He snarls at me. The skin around his eyes has whitened, indicating... extreme stress and fury.
"I-I l-lost my g-gun... Sir..."
"What?!" He thunders.
"I said I lost my gun... a-and even if I HAD it, I do not know how to-"
"What USE are you, Drone?! Mighty Tallest, HERE, take my sidearm." He screams, throwing a bulky, high-powered particle laser pistol at me. It is far different from the small, sleek pistol I normally carry. It is unfamiliar in my hands.
If you SEE it, POINT that end at it and pull the DAMNED TRIGGER! At least the sudden zapping noises followed by your pathetic screaming demise will alert me to it's presence." He is screaming at me.
I suddenly feel very tired. Almost too tired to be afraid. In an oddly curious way, I just want all of this to be over. I numbly take the pistol and follow closely behind, noting that he has begun to breath rapidly and shake, a sure sign of impending physical collapse. He has lost alot of blood.
I hope he lasts until we find this thing out there.
"It fell somewhere over here, drone." He is almost cackling. "You can see where it squirmed in pain." He points at what looks like a simple pile of trash to me. I nod as though I see what he sees and that seems to appease him.
He frowns. "It has moved. It is..." his eyes widen. "It could be anywhere!" He spins drunkenly, pointing his rifle in all directions.
Including me, I note, most alarmingly.
"Sir... p-perhaps we should return to the ship..." I suggest.
He points the rifle at me. "The ship?!" He asks, accusingly.
I wince, expecting to feel the intense heat and then oblivion.
His eyes narrow, his expression taking on a cunning aspect.
"Yes... the ship. More weapons! We can spot it from above. Yessss." he hisses, then doubles over, coughing. I note a splotch of green on his faceplate when he stands up.
He does not.
He rounds on me and grabs my hand jerking me into a stumbling run after him. "We must hurry! Time is of the essense."
Shit. They're not taking the bait. For a second I thought they were going to follow me down into this depression, and if they did, they were mine, because I have a couple tricks up my sleeve. I got really lucky when I fell down the slope. Somehow I missed all of my own traps. I doubt they'd have been as lucky.
Christ this place is dangerous. Someone should clean all of these traps up before somebody gets hurt.
Heh.
Ok, that's the pain talking. Sarcasm helps me keep my mind off of it, this intense agony. I still can't move my arm, and I'm afraid of how deep tissue this burn is. Fortunately, I can twitch my fingers. A little bit. I think.
Looking at the bright side, looking at the bright side.
Ah fuck, they're heading back for the ship. Ok, calm down. You just have to stop them, that's all there is to it.
You can't afford not to.
I locate the safe ditch I created as a pipeline for myself from one side of the field to the other and rush through it, pulling out my detonator from my pocket (thank god I didn't lose that little thing).
I hear a TWHAPP! Noise up ahead.
I smile.
There you are.
He is dragging me across this field of death. I see danger and horrible limb severing pain on all sides, concealed in every innocuous looking pile of snack food wrappings. I see them rush by on both sides as Commander Tig strains to reach the ship.
It is only a matter of time.
Suddenly his grip on the arm of my suit is ripped violently free and vertigo pounds me as I find myself jolted in every direction but the one I had been moving in. I catch a glimpse of Tig watching me, blinking behind his faceplate, his eyes following my bouncing trajectory.
Something has entrapped my legs, binding them together cruelly, painfully. I am starting to lose feeling in my feet. The blood is rushing to my head.
Why am I so calm?
I do not know, really. I suppose because I expected this. It just seems like I have spent my entire life being shoved or dragged from one horrifyingly dangerous situation to another. If someone like Jen, or Gif... or even... I find myself shuddering to say, Nis cannot survive here, what chance did I have, really?
Still, I have a duty, a job to do.
That, and despite my calm, I am mortally afraid of that thing...
I have stopped bouncing. I find that I am suspended several feet off of the ground at the end of a braided cable of wires affixed to a flexible pole of some sort. I reach up and try to free my legs, but I am unable to get under the cable with my clumsy suit gloved fingers.
"Commander... help me!" I cry desperately, searching for him.
He stares at me as though seeing me for the first time.
"Medical Drone Vic... why are you upside down?" He asks, his antennae cocked at a quizzical angle.
At any other time, this would have been quite comical. However, I am having trouble seeing the humor of the situation.
"P-please sir! Get me down!" I ask again.
"I have to get back to the ship, M.D. Vic." He says absently, then straightens and turns.
"Wait! I don't want to die! Please help-"
"Vic," he says, almost gently, as though explaining something to a defective smeet. This is the first and last time he has referred to me as just Vic. "That's what drones are for." He does not turn around.
I lose sight of him.
It is the last time I see him.
I hang there for a moment, listlessly. Then something in my head snaps.
I am not going to hang here and die like... like... like an insect! I activate my articulate and specialized limbs from my pak and begin to try and free myself. Unfortunately, my medical tools are designed to cut through flesh, not metal, and my repairing tools are too clumsy to use without a good angle on the wires which are biting into my suit. If I hole the suit, the liquid will get me.
I begin to saw at it with my surgical tools, but it will take time.
Time I do not have.
A sudden flash of white light makes freeing myself a moot point.
I see no more.
We're in a race, and I'm going to lose. My arm throbs painfully, a pain that stabs up from the wound to strike my skull like the ball pean hammer of some demented toddler. I'm moving as fast as I can, but he has a weapon, and he has a head start. The other one is not too far away, but she isn't going anywhere. He just left her there, to die.
Typical.
Still, I have one last ace in the hole, and I was saving it for a special occasion.
I wait until he's right around where I want him to be, which is only about fifty yards from the ship. Then I pop the top on the detonator and click the button three times.
Then I get down and cover my neck and head with my good arm.
It took me a long time to figure it out, a week actually, and this was compounded by the fact that I couldn't exactly examine the evidence afterward if something went wrong, but I eventually figured out that the power cells in the packs were a sort of fusion battery. At least, I think it's fusion. It really doesn't matter what it is, just that it's really powerful, and relatively stable.
Hence, me calling it a battery.
I'd thrown a couple of the damn things from the top of Mount Rancid, which I believe I explained earlier, and I'd ruled out using them as grenades. For one thing, the blast radius of one that had it's self repairing, self sealing protective covering breached was such that it was a little too hard to throw it far enough away. Additionally, I could never throw it in such a manner that it exploded reliably every time. Sometimes they exploded, sometimes they didn't. Sometimes they didn't explode at first and then a few seconds later, they blew up and startled the shit out of me.
Not conductive to extensive field use.
However, I DO know a thing or two about electronics. If you attach a wire or conductive material across the two terminals of a battery, you create a phenomenon called thermal runaway. Basically the way it works is this. If you create continuity between two terminals of a battery, you create a circuit. Current flows from the positive pole to the negative pole, in a circle. However, the battery isn't a perfect conductor. It has a certain amount of internal resistance. This resistance causes some of the current of the battery to be lost.
Lost in the form of heat.
Heat causes the battery to produce more voltage. More voltage means more current. More current means more heat. More heat means more voltage, and the cycle continues until the electrolyte in the battery boils. Boiling liquid expands, and... (Author's Note: Kids, don't try this at home. You WILL blow up the battery, and possibly create a fire, not to mention spill hot electrolyte all over the place, and if you did it to a lithium Ion battery, you just created a poison gas. I'm not fucking around, this is for real shit. If you absolutely HAVE to see it happen, please do it in a controlled, well ventilated spot. Most smaller batteries will just get really hot, but you never know...)
I don't think I need to explain what happens then.
The problem is, the reaction is too slow. I wanted something that blew in a couple of seconds after I started the reaction, not a minute or so.
That's where the experimentation came in. See, I couldn't find the damn negative terminal of the battery at first. Finally I figured out that the casing itself was insulating the negative terminal, which was wired under the casing to come out right next to the positive lead, and these were both insulated from one another. So what I had to do was carefully remove the negative ground wire and some of the protective covering around the negative terminal with a conductive bit of wire, never getting completely through the casing, and never quite touching the negative side of the battery, also slightly off center, but not very far from it. It stayed in place after the casing reformed itself. Then I attach another wire to the positive side, and connect the two wires to a switch and a receiver scavenged from one of the packs. Hit the button on the detonator (really just a transmitter), and the receiver causes the switch to click, creating continuity from the postive lead to the negative lead...
But wait...
The casing isn't conductive, and though the voltage at the end of the wire is TRYING to get to the negative side, it can't quite get there, so a difference in voltage is created, until the differential gets too great, and then SNAP!
A mini-lightning bolt jumps from the wire to the negative terminal, arcing through the case. It instantaneously blows a hole through said casing between the wire and the negative lead, and then...
You have your explosion.
Oh BOY, do you have your explosion.
The blast hits only seconds after I hit the detonator and violently tosses trash everywhere. Some of it lands on me, actually, I get fucking BURIED in the shit, and my bad arm gets jostled.
I have to fight not to pass out again. This time, however, I fail.
I am probably only out for a moment though. Then I push the crap off of me and stand, a ringing noise echoing in my skull.
Wow.
That was...
Impressive.
There is a thirty meter wide, twenty meter deep hole around where I buried my charge. The ship is now at a slightly skewed angle, but looks undamaged. No sign of the wounded one... must have been vaporized in the...
Wait a second, there's a trail of green from the edge of the explosion to the gantry of the ship..
That fucker is STILL ALIVE?!!!
GODDAMN IT, WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO KILL THIS ASSHOLE! FUCK!
I grab a handy bit of piping in my good hand, ignoring the slight burn I receive from the still hot metal and run down to the ship.
I'll BEAT this fucker to death if I have to.
I get to the ship and cautiously look inside. I gotta give that little Irken bastard this much, he's tough. There isn't just blood in this trail, there are bits and pieces that look really important, like, shouldn't be on the outside important.
I might not need the stick after all.
I ease around the corner, and then I see him.
He's... smiling.
Half of his face is a blackened, half suit, half flesh, melted together, flash fried, RUIN, the grin really more a rictus of death. His antennae are gone, practically sheared from his head, one only a stump, the other just missing. Half of his body is charred almost completely through, and as his arm moves it cracks sickeningly and he loses bits and pieces of it. The leg on the charred side is a bloody, ruined stump.
"I-I-I w-was waiting... for... YOU!" It croaks.
I am stunned at this grisly visage before me, but not so stunned that I don't notice the blinking lights on the little wristwatch looking thing on his good wrist.
The lights get more and more urgent.
Gaz screams in my head like a banshee.
"Oh, fuck ME!" I scream with her, having seen more than enough movies to know what THAT is.
I turn and run as fast as I goddamn can, spot a button on the side of the wall on my way out, and hit it in a flash of panic, guessing at it's function.
The airlock begins to close, agonizingly slow and I dive for the crater my bomb created, slamming brutally onto my injured shoulder and writhing in agony.
A blast that DWARFS mine roars over head.
The concussion, mercifully, knocks me out.
I come to, not really wanting to, and blink.
I can't see, it is dark, and I also can't move.
Fuck. Just what I always wanted for christmas. A premature burial.
Sighing, I shove at the thing covering me with my good hand, and surprisingly, it moves. I push it off of me and sit up, breathing in the stink of ozone and burnt metal, and the hellish natural odor that oozes from every pore of this fuckin' shit hole.
The shuttle is still there.
At least, what's left of it.
Figures.
It takes me a while, staring at the charred remnants of what was going to be my ticket out of here, then I calmly, resignedly stand up and limp and drag my exhausted, bruised, battered and burned body out of the depression. Thank god I didn't break anything, but I still can't move my right arm too well. THAT'S alarming.
So... final score, Dib 5, Irkens 0. Well, maybe Dib 5 Irkens 1/2 considering how shitty I feel right now. Not that it matters.
Fuck.
I really can't take anymore of this. This up and down, up and down, of hope and despair, I...
I stop, eye level with an Irken.
I blink.
Now it's not what you think. I mean, how the hell could an Irken get eye level with me? Certainly not on it's own, at least, not without some really elevating shoes. Nope, this one was upside down.
I think it's that female one...
A further curiousity reaches my attention. The blast knocked it around a bit, probably knocked it out,judging from how limply it hangs. It looks battered and beaten, even in it's thick protective suit.
But it is still alive.
I stare at it, at her, this fellow prisoner of a planet called Dirt.
It'd be a mercy if I bashed it's head in with a rock.
Do I really feel like being merciful?
Hmmm... decisions, decisions.