Exigent
Several weeks passed, Dib's life not significantly changing—his dreams of grandeur alterations quickly crashed and burned. He did have more credibility, and yet, no one paid any more attention to him. In fact, Gaz paid less attention to him, opting to ignore rather than threaten. Dib, despite his disappointment, considered this a plus.
Dib spent much of his time inspecting an old Victorian house just outside the city, attempting to find ghosts.
"I know you're here somewhere!" Dib shouted. "I'll find you!" He was loudly crying this out and running around holding out a large dish shaped microphone and large headphones adorned his head. He had caught no sounds other than his own—but that was to be expected, Dib wasn't exactly being quiet as he inspected the large house. Dib sighed unhappily. He had been snooping around this house for a week after it was shown on Mysterious Mysteries.
"I'm being too loud," Dib stated, deflating a little bit. "I'm just... gonna go home for today." Dib slumped and slowly wandered home.
He stole a piece of Gaz's pizza before retiring to his bedroom. Dib turned his computer on and stared at the screen blankly. Dib noticed that despite the fact that Zim was gone, the cameras placed in his house were still active. Dib also observed the FBI nor anyone else were present in the house.
Before Dib knew it, he was sitting on Zim's couch watching television. It was only when Dib reached Zim's house that he realized he'd neglected to inform the authorities about Zim's "basement."
"Oh, I should go down there!" Dib shouted during a commercial. Dib chose the elevator hidden under the decorative table, residing just across the room.
Once in the lab, Dib immediately began fiddling with some strange objects piled in a large room.
After nearly melting off his fingers, Dib left that particular room. He continued through Zim's lab, pausing when he came to a room labelled 'Experiments.' After a quick moment of deliberation, Dib chose to enter the room.
Enormous glass test tubes lined the walls of the room. Only some of the tubes had creatures contained in them, the rest were filled with a pinkish, bubbling liquid, not unlike the one Dib saw after Zim's autopsy. He ventured further inside, in morbid curiosity. Dib noticed Zim had apparently acquired many subject from other planets, as none of the one's he could see were human. Dib stopped to examine one particular alien, who appeared gigantic and powerful—raising the question of how Zim managed to contain it, and, not to mention, capture it.
As Dib moved closer and closer a sudden movement caught his eye. It came from a tube further down the row. Dib chose to figure out what it was—the creatures in all of the tubes Dib had seen so far had been subdued somehow, but movement meant the substance used as a tranquilizer was not operational.
Dib reached the tank in which he thought he had seen the motion and had to do a double-take when he saw the contents of the tank; a human. The person inside was probably mid-teens, around Dib's age.
Rage built up in Dib—he couldn't believe Zim would actually test on humans. Dib thought he'd done a decent job, after freeing Nick, of making sure no one else got captured by the alien.
After these thoughts ran through Dib's mind, he knew he had to fee this subject of Zim's—immediately. Dib turned to the computer attached to the tube, as it appeared to be controlling the particular tank. Dib frantically pressed buttons and reading the combination of Irken and broken English there.
As Dib attempted to figure out how to open the cylindrical container, he came across some devastating information.
"It's a good thing I'm fluent in Irken..." Dib mused. "But honestly, what's wrong with that alien? Taking people's brains out. Doesn't anything strike him as wrong? Ugh." Dib closed the window of information, giving up on helping this human, as Dib knew he would not be successful in his liberation. Death was imminent without a brain, outside the test tube.
Dib dejectedly left the room—as he couldn't take seeing the poor trapped creatures.
"I should turn them over to the authorities... Knowing them, they probably think Zim is—err was, the only alien out there..." Dib muttered to himself.
As Dib wandered through the lab he saw many rooms and things he clearly remembered from their younger days: the room containing the brain parasite, the room with the controls to the Irken Armada main ship, where Zim had put Dib under a virtual reality delusion to see if Dib had thrown the muffin, and so many more.
"We sure had... well, fun when we were younger," Dib reflected. In the more recent years, Zim and Dib's battle for the Earth became more vicious, and far less ridiculous. There were no giant hamsters and no giant water-balloon wars—in fact, there was no water fights at all. Dib and Zim, out of the blue, started fighting harder. When Zim's plans became better (slightly), Dib had to put far more effort into foiling them, as well as capturing Zim. Dib smirked. "Turns out, I win," he stated in triumph.
Dib's communicating watch beeped; Gaz was calling him. He raised his arm up to face level and saw a small image of his younger sibling.
"Yeah? What's the matter?" Dib asked, opening communications between the two watches.
"Come home now." Gaz hung up as soon as she said that. Dib frowned but headed to the exit.
"...it's not like I can't come back tomorrow or anything..." Dib reminded himself.
As it turned out, Gaz only wanted Dib to return home to pay for the pizza she ordered. Dib scowled and forked over enough money for the pizza before slumping off to his bedroom. Again.
Staring out the window, Dib consciously noticed it was not late out at all, and there were plenty of usable hours left in the day. Pulling out Zim's pak, Dib began examining the ins and outs of the thing.
"Oh so there's a cord that goes inside to attach it!" Dib exclaimed after finding deep holes in it. "I wonder if I could synthesize it... There could be so much to learn from this thing!" Dib's excitement was rejuvenated as he placed the pak on his desk, in a dome shaped analysis machine Dib had borrowed from his father. A few beeps later, the machine spit out a piece of paper, saying no analysis could be completed as the material was of unknown origin.
"Guess I'll have to do this manually then," Dib grumbled. The extra work didn't bother him too much, it was how Zim still managed to be difficult after death.
Hours later, Dib was exhausted and had barely made any progress. Drooping eyelids overpowered determination, and, with limbs of jelly, Dib collapsed onto his bed for the night.
The next morning Dib shot straight out of bed, as he realized he'd left Zim's pak just sitting on his desk. Gathering the strange metallic thing in his arms, Dib quickly inspected it for changes. Finding none, Dib's panic receded, and the dream he'd had floated back into his mind; the dream about how to construct a cord to attach the pak to his computer. Dib didn't even consider the logic of following a dream as blue-prints for the cord.
He immediately set to work.
Gosh darn this fic.
This chapter is superbly short.
Makes me rage. Slightly.
-Taryn