The Irken Assassin Ch. 14 - The Trap
The day had begun to drag on, every hour feeling like an eternity. Every hour brought on deeper tension for all involved with approaching night. At city hall, Dib lets out a sigh of relief, as the trap was set. "Now it ends..." he comments, looking out a cut-out window of the cardboard exterior of the fake city hall as the sun began to set. Back at his own house, the garage door scrolls open, a low violet glow pulsating out from the spiked black voot runner housed within it. As its engines start up, golden flame spurts out of the runner, it thrusting out of the garage and immediately into the air with a low roar. The ship glides easily over the suburban buildings, soon slowing into a hover over Zim's base. The house had begun to rise off its foundation on thick metal tubes, giving room for the Quad-Doomer to step out.
From within her ship, Zerg takes a mental survey of the Quad-Doomer, then shaking her head in disbelief. Zim proved his engineering ability once again, making the robot's legs better armored than in her design. She types a command into her runner's dashboard, sending a message to Zim. "Nice work on the Quad-Doomer, Zim." she tells him, then breaking the communication to send another message to Dib. "We've got a problem. Zim bettered the machine, so if you need to take it down, every warhead will count." she warns him, then closing the transmission. The Quad-Doomer camouflages itself, as well as Zim's body, for the ride to the City. As it heads off, it leaves deep footprints in the asphalt as it stomps along, its weight the cause of damage to the ground. The black voot runner returns to a glide, following after the hidden machine like a stalker or lost puppy.
A half hour and three crushed buildings later, the Quad-Doomer arrives outside the City Hall building, Dib waiting outside, behind a street light to avoid being seen by Zim. A menacing laugh echoes seemingly from the air, until the behemoth of a robot unveiled itself, aiming a series of missiles and varied forms of explosives at the City Hall building. All at once, dozens of missiles and lasers burst from the core of the Quad-Doomer, seeming to strike the building at once, sending fire and explosive bursts out of the cardboard decoy and halfway down the city block. "VICTORY! VICTORY FOR ZIM!" Zim shouts, then laughing hysterically. "Pathetic little humans, this is your end!" he called out. From above, Zerg watches the scene intently, her eyes heavily shadowed in focus.
So far everything seemed to be going as planned. Zim believed he destroyed the leader of the planet, and he had enough power at his disposal to do the same to the rest of the planet. Dib didn't need to take action just yet, and if the plan continued to go well, Zim would be being shipped back to Irk by midnight, under the illusion of victory. Only back on Irk, before the Tallests and the entire Irken Empire, would the Irken Assassin be set free to do her job, as described in the job description. There would be one less defect in the Irken Empire to deal with.
However, this moment of smoothness wouldn't last long enough. "Hmm? What's this..." Zim asks himself, noticing something weird about the way the building burned. It seemed like a sphere was set in the center of the flame, pushing the flame outward and away from the burning building. Suspicious, Zim has the Quad-Doomer leap forward, landing among the flames, and on top of the shield protecting the real building. "What is this!?" He demands to no-one in particular. The black voot runner banks out of the way as Zim suddenly figured out what was going on, seeing Dib finally to one side of the street from atop the city hall building. The building loses its camouflage, but not its shield, yet. "Now I see..." Zim growls, and then points one finger accusingly in Zerg's direction. "You're that Irken Assassin! You must have been hired to kill me!" he accuses, quite accurately.
Zerg grins in impression. "Well, you figured it out before getting off the planet... quite impressive." she comments, then looking down to Dib, sending him a transmission to his watch. "You know what to do." she tells him. "Right." Dib responds, then stepping into the open, pulling a few warheads from his pocket, throwing them at the Quad-Doomer, one of the bombs slicing threw and exploding one of the Quad-Doomer's jointed limbs, the other two thrown missing their mark or hitting the much stronger torso. Inside the Quad-Doomer, a warning screen popped up, pointing out the damage dealt. Growling in anger, Zim looks over at Dib. "I'll deal with you later human!" he snaps, then looking back up at the voot runner, targeting it with some of the machine's lazers. The front of the voot runner opens, a bar of energy sliding out and widening in the air until it becomes like a drill, a hole remaining in the tip of the drill, energy charging within it visible as a green glow. The Quad-Doomer releases its lasers again, just barely missing the voot runner as it dives under, the drill spinning as it releases its own laser from the drill, cutting along the second limb of the Quad-Doomer and into part of the torso. With a sudden roar of its turbines, the voot runner charges forward at Zim's machine, colliding head on with its torso, the drill cutting clean into the metal of the Quad Doomer, the metal-on-metal screech resulting from the attack enough to cause Dib to fall to his knees, holding his head in pain on the ground.
The drill once more became no more than a bar of energy, retracting back into the voot runner as its window slid open, Zerg jumping out of her ship, claws extended to their full length, shoulder spikes held high in aggression. Zim screams in surprise, then quickly ejecting from the ship, landing a moment later on the asphalt. "Hull damage acquired. Initiating Self Destruct Sequence." the automatronic voice of the Quad-Doomer reports, irken numbers flashing on the screen in countdown. Zerg teleports out in time for the Quad-Doomer to explode, sending chunks of metal and wire mixed with fire across the street. Zerg quickly looks back at Dib. "Get yourself somewhere safe!" She commands, then turning her focus to Zim, as he extended his pak's mechanical spider legs, now looming high above her, his expression holding a severe rage