Ch.6: Murphy's Law
When Dib finally woke up, it was to the sound of loud faux snoring. He sat up slowly, pushing the blanket off his head, aiming a squinting glare in the direction of the noise. "I know you're awake, Zim. You don't snore."
As he grabbed his glasses and shoved them on, he heard a rustle, and a clink of the cord. When he looked again, Zim had managed to maneuver himself into a defensive crouching position back against the wall; but he was still wobbly and woozy from the cuffs. He blinked rapidly as he stared back at Dib, fighting to maintain focus.
When Dib shifted his legs off the bed to stand up, the alien hissed and shifted himself, pressing his back more firmly against the wall. Protecting his PAK. He finally saw Dib as a real threat. The boy sighed, rubbing his eyes and face, trying and failing not to notice how that made his guts hurt.
When he stood up, the alien growled, "Don' come near me, hyuman."
Dib glanced at his alarm clock. "Relax, space monster. We've got a bit before sundown." His stomach gurgled, unhappily reminding him of two missed meals and no dinner the night before.
The smaller alien seemed surprised when Dib headed for the door, giving the messed up nest of blankets and pillows a wide berth. "W-where are youu goin'?"
Dib rubbed an eye, surpressing a yawn. "Food. Want any?"
Even 'drugged' up by the cuffs, the alien managed to bristle. "Eat dis-gusting hyuuman food? By the Tallest, no!"
"Suit yourself." Dib shut the door quietly behind him. Across the way, Gaz's door was open, the room inside dark. But when he glanced into the living room on his way to the kitchen, the purple-haired girl was nowhere to be seen. Dib shrugged it off, focusing instead on a more pressing issue.
Zim. He was awake enough to put up a fight now, and from his reactions when Dib got up, it was definitely going to be a problem. He had expected this, anticipated it, but he was beginning to learn that there was a huge gap between planning a plan and the act itself. Swallowing back the sick feeling inside, and taking a deep, steadying breath, Dib walked down the stairs at the end of the kitchen, down into his father's lab...
When Dib came back into the bedroom, he tossed a bag of chips in Zim's general direction, not really caring if he ate any or not. It was just...weird to Dib to eat in front of someone who wasn't, especially since that someone was currently chained to his wall.
As Dib sat on the bed silently with his small horde of junk food, Zim eyed the bag as if were about to grow legs and come after him. But it had been quite some time since he had eaten as well, and filthy hyuuman pig-slop was better than nothing...
After a long moment, he peeked up at Dib, to make sure he wasn't looking. When he saw that the Dib's attention was safely directed out the window and on his own 'meal', he snatched up the bag and tore into it eagerly. Dib heard the noise but didn't turn around, a smile tugging, unbidden, at his mouth.
When it sounded like Zim had finished, Dib decided to test the boundaries of this odd ceasefire and tossed him another one. Over his shoulder, of course; he knew the proud alien didn't want to be seen as accepting something from an inferior hyuuman, especially the one named Dib.
For a second, Dib thought he wouldn't take it. But then he heard the quiet crinkle of the bag being opened-gentler this time.
After that, they each crunched to themselves in relative silence, a silence that was more comfortable than Dib expected it to be, a fact that made his guts squirm and twist even more...
When Zim finished the second bag, he squinted at the back of Dib's head quizzically. "Why is the Dib being nice to Zim?"
"Because he's not a monster, Zim." Somehow, that sentence rung a little less true in the face of what he was about to do...
He stretched out his legs, tossing them over the side of the bed with a brisk focus he certainly didn't feel, palming something on the bed behind him. "Time to go, Zim."
Zim's antennae, which had perked up some to listen, immediately flattened again in threat as he glared and hissed.
This was the hard part. He didn't bother to persuade the alien-it wouldn't have worked, anyway. He moved forward carefully, into the nest space, dropping down a bit so he was on Zim's level. There he paused, watching Zim as if he were a wild animal. Zim stared back, watching, motionless for once. As Dib moved closer, the alien shivered, lids dropping a bit-but then he launched himself forward in a swipe at the human, with both bound fists. Dib instinctively ducked back, grabbing one of the thin green arms-
"OW!" Zim yelped, jerking back. Dib let him go, watching as he turned his arm over, revealing a small puncture wound leaking dark blue blood.
As he looked up at Dib with wide, shocked eyes, the boy held up a hand, revealing a small band around one finger with a tiny needle sticking out of it.
"Thumbtack sedative," he said quietly, amber eyes sad. "Good night, Zim."
It hit Zim 'like a ton of bricks', as a human would say: a high powered sedative, much stronger than the cuffs by far. Not even his superior body or mind could resist it. The alien was out long before his body slumped over onto the blankets.
Dib sighed to himself, carefully removing the band and setting it aside before turning back to Zim...
...
A few minutes later, and Dib's black Lexus was out and prowling the streets again, an unconscious alien in the backseat, chasing the last red-orange rays of sunlight westward, toward the park.
Every now and again, Dib felt his eyes drift up, toward his rearview mirror. Not to check traffic-the road was pretty much empty-but to look at the being in his backseat. Zim. His enemy. The world's enemy. After this, there would be not even the slightest of slight chances of him ever bothering Dib again. After this, the only way Dib would ever see Zim again was on the news-if they publicized anything remotely specific, that is.
This should have made Dib happy-happy enough to shit rainbows and baby unicorns. But...He growled in frustration at himself, jerking his eyes back down to watch the road, where they belonged.
Soon after, Dib was pulling into the Regional Park, and into a secluded grove further down the drive. Scattermoon was already there; a red Chevy Cobalt with an indigo SEN symbol in the back window was parked in the grass near the grove.
Dib shut off the engine and sat there a long moment, gripping the wheel hard enough to make his knuckles turn white. He took a deep breath. "C'mon Dib. Just get it over with." And with that, he let go of the wheel, shoving open the car door.
Dib walked slowly past the Cobalt, into the heart of the grove a few feet away. As he skirted past a weeping willow, he saw her, sitting casually at a picnic table.
Dib's jaw dropped. Even for a much older woman, she was pretty. Very, very pretty. Her long, light silver hair was swept back in a loose bun on the back of her head, revealing a finely wrinkled, heart-shaped face with cheekbones sharp enough to cut butter. She wore a white and gunmetal gray jumpsuit, similar to his father's labcoat; that would have told Dib she was from a science-related profession, but under that ageless sapphire gaze, all Dib was aware of was how much of a sleep-rumpled mess he was...
She smiled at him, rising from her seat and moving toward him. There was something weird in the way she walked-she almost seemed to float, the edges of the jumpsuit around her legs seeming to shimmer...He blinked, dismissing it as a trick of the weird lighting in the grove.
When she was in front of him, she said, "Hello, Agent Mothman. Or should I say, Dib?"
Dib nodded stupidly. "Um, hi, Agent Scattermoon-"
"Oh please, call me Martha." She interrupted good-naturedly, giving him a hug. "We are friends, after all."
"M-Martha..." She smelled nice, a weird, mildly spicy fragrance he couldn't place. Something itched at the back of his mind, but it was quickly forgotten as she let go of him and stepped back.
She sighed happily, smiling at him again. "Do you have the Subject?"
"Wha-? O-oh yeah. In my car." What the hell? Dib turned to make his way back to his Lexus, Sca-Martha following easily behind.
When he opened his backseat door to reveal Zim, Martha inhaled sharply. "Magnificent specimen..." Dib snorted, biting his lip to keep in a sarcastic comment regarding Zim's 'magnificence'.
Martha ignored him, instead crouching down on her long legs to get a better look at the unconscious alien. Zim's antennae shivered as her shadow fell over him, and he curled in tighter on himself, revealing more of the glinting metal of his PAK. Martha exhaled, almost shakily, one slender hand reaching out toward the alien device...
What happened next happened in a blur to Dib's eyes. A flash of soundless light half blinded him when Martha touched the PAK; a high pitched, inhuman shriek followed, and a blurred shape was thrown away from the side of the car.
Dib turned in shocked alarm, blinking quickly to clear his vision. "Martha! Are you-?" What he saw took the words right out of his mouth.
Martha lay on the grass, rolling to clutch at her arm. But her shape was fuzzy, and as Dib stared, it blinked out of existence altogether, revealing a faint blue humaniod shape, with something like clear, long, hornlike, antenna-thin appendages curled around the sides of her head where her bun used to be. A face, more birdlike than human, looked up at Dib's voice.
It finally clicked for Dib. "You're an-!"
"Alien," the familiar voice hissed from the strange face. She-it rose up on thin, gazelle-like legs, raising an arm with a threatening silvery gun-like device attached, pointing it at Dib-
"Big Head Boooooy!" Squeed a voice.
"GIR?" A green blur hit the Scattermoon-alien dead on, slamming her/it into a nearby tree. Dib didn't hang around to see what happened next. He slammed Zim's door shut and jumped in, backing out so fast the tired ripped up grass.
He slammed on the gas, practically flying down the park's driveway. A stream of cursewords flew from his mouth as his brain reeled. Scattermoon was an alien. SCATTERMOON, the elected LEADER of the Swollen Eyeball Network, was. An. Alien. His friend, his mentor through all his years as a paranormal invesigator, was. An. ALIEN!
"Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck-!" No, Dib think! You used to be good at that, remember? Right. Plan. He had one, for situations similar to this.
He cleared his throat, brain clicking through his options. "Call Gaz," he ordered his dashboard computer. The thing dinged; then the sound of a phone dialing and then ringing filled the car. C'mon Gaz. Pick up pick up pick up-
She did, after three rings. "This better be good, Dib."
"It is. Where are you?"
Dib could almost see the fifteen year old bristling. "Just got home, not like it's any of your business. Why?"
Dib breathed an enormous sigh of relief. "Gaz, I need you to listen to me carefully. Scattermoon, the leader of the Swollen Eyeball Network, is an alien. A very dangerous, hostile alien who wants Zim for some reason. Anyway, I need you to go into Dad's lab and prep the-"
Gaz, as usual, was ten steps ahead of her brother. "You haven't thought this plan through, have you?"
"Wha-?"
"They're here, Dib. Dad's colleagues from Dorkville. He's showing them some stupid invention in his lab..."
"Shit! Okay Gaz, I need you to get them all out of the house, now!"
When Gaz didn't immediately answer, Dib's heart sank. "Please Gaz. I can't afford to have them see him, not yet. Not until I've done something about Scattermoon."
There was another long, heart-stopping pause. Then: "Okay. But you owe me, Dib. Big time."
Dib let out the breath he wasn't aware he'd been holding. "Thanks, Gaz." She hung up. As Dib reluctantly slowed his wild pace-to give Gaz more time, and since there was no sign of iminent pursuit-he became aware of another sound. Laughter, high-pitched and drunk-sounding, coming from his back seat.
Near panic gave way to anger. "Shut up, Zim! This isn't funny!"
"Oho yussss. Sweet sweet irony. It's delicious!" the alien cackled again, the noise growing softer and then dying out completely as the sedative took him away again. Dib shook his head in irritation, though a part of him-a very, very small part, mind-was secretly relieved.
A/N: Woohoo! Ch.6! Poor Dib :(. Not only is he falling in love with his worst enemy, the only mentor-ish figure in his life turned out to be a sociopathic alien in disguise...definitely Murphy's Law material *nods*
Usual disclaimer: Dib, Zim and Invader Zim in general all belong to Jhonen Vasquez. Scattermoon, however, is miiine *pets evil alien*