The Occult Experience
Chapter Eight
Sneak Thieving?
Or
The illegal requisition of weapons to aid in the war effort against the alien menace.
?/\?
Three people stood before a glowing green house on a cul-de-sac. One had a scythe-like cowlick, black pants, and a black trench coat. Another was wearing a purple hoody, purple sweatpants, and looked anorexic. The last, and just a little taller than the first, wore a dark green shirt and dark brown cargo pants, and had an eye-patch over his left eye.
A little boy rode around the circle of the cul-de-sac slowly, but still passed the trio a few times, muttering "Pirate" over and over again. Dib, in the center of the trio, paid the boy and his little red bicycle little mind. Shauna, on his left, did the same. Al, on Dib's right, flinched in irritation every time he heard the word.
"Are you certain you wish to test this, Dib?" Shauna asked the boy quietly. They'd walked all the way to the extra-terrestrials home from the mall in the real world, a step above the spectrum where they were neither seen or felt. It had been an enlightening experience in more ways than one.
One is it showed just how little the world was willing to look into something that wasn't quite right, such as the fact that Shauna's sweat pants were tied over her pelvic bone or the red glow coming from beneath the shadow of the hood. Another was for Al's wallet, whom was stuck paying for the new outfits.
Say what you will about fashion, cloaks are not inconspicuous.
In the background, the sun was just starting to set, the trio's shadows crawled along the ground, and the mid-october air was becoming cool.
"Yeah, you guys say it'll work, so I figure it's best to take care of it soon, right?" Dib stepped forward, and countless beady eyes followed his movements. Shauna and Al caught up with him halfway to the door and put their hands on his shoulders. In a snap all of the gnomes turned back to the road, staring creepily at the road and not the tresspassers.
Dib reached out for the doorknob, but a second after he touched it, his hand went through it, shortly followed by the rest of his body going through the door. His two...two...two minders? Allies? Friends? coming through the door with him without even a moment of delay.
Every time Dib entered Zim's home base, he was struck with just how everything looked just that little bit off. Like a child had done the interior designs from what he'd seen on sitcoms. Or perhaps the interior decorator had just been colorblind... No, no, that still wouldn't explain the toilet in the kitchen.
"Y'ever go swimming in jello, Dib?" Al's question echoed oddly in the unnaturally silent house. Dib couldn't hear the insane little robot singing in the kitchen as he baked cupcakes, or pies, or who-knows-what filled with tuna fish and hotsauce. The television was off, no Evil Monkey show assaulting their eyes and ears. The only sound he could hear was the usual humming, coming from within the walls.
"Jello?" Dib barely had a chance to ask before he felt Al start pushing on his head and his feet started sinking into the floor. He suddenly understood, now that he'd started sinking into the floor, it felt like he was just slowly sinking through a few layers of Jello.
And then suddenly it stopped, and he wasn't sinking through jello, he was just falling. Shauna was falling next to him, and Dib realized something.
She'd let go.
Blue lights started flashing, and the computerized voice of the base started screaming something in Irken, or whatever the little green menace called his language, that Dib was sure translated into "INTRUDER! Getim getim getim!"
He felt a bony hand close over his shoulder and sighed as the klaxons and lights stopped flashing barely a moment before he could hear the tickertack of Zim racing to his position.
"COMPUTER!" Dib stared at the little green man-child-thing in abstract fascination as Shauna helped him up. Why would he speak in english when there was nobody around?
"Where is the foolish fool who would foolishly dare enter the home of Zim?!" Again the computer said something in a language Dib didn't understand, but it seemed to soothe Zim, who retracted his PAK legs.
The small green creature moved swiftly to and fro, looking in any dark corners, small crannies, and all possible hiding places. Dib was unsure if he should be disturbed or amused at the sight of Zim hanging upside-down from some wires while looking into a small access port, barely large enough for a cock-roach.
It was about when Zim started climbing down from his perch that Dib heard a repeating, measured slamming noise from up above.
"Computer! What's making that racket? Where's GIR?" Apparently Zim heard it too.
"MASTAH!" A pipe overhead ruptured, spilling a lot of thick, yellowish fluid all over the floor, along with a little blue-eyed robot. It pulled itself out of the congealing mess, and Dib stepped back as the puddle grew closer to him and the Lich. "I made lemon jell-o jello!"
Zim stared at the muffed-up SIR unit in something approaching shock, a look which Dib mirrored perfectly. Shauna's eyes glowed with fascination at the sight of a lemon-lime colored talking dog. The banging overhead had stopped as well.
"AHHH!" A green and brown blur splashed down in the puddle of lemon jell-o, sending flecks flying everywhere. On Zim, on Dib, on Shauna's new clothes. The bright side was the now relentless screaming of Zim as his green skin blistered. Al had landed head-first.
"I'm okay…" Al said as he tried to stand up, and fell back over. "I'll be okay." A few moments later he was standing alongside Dib, opposite Shauna, his eye blinking blearily as the red orb in his other eye socket cycled through dim and bright.
"Should we follow the small bug-man?" Shauna asked her charge. With the intensity of her eyes on Al, Dib was sure she was amused.
Dib started forward, following the little green creature through tubes and hallways, all the while followed by the strange pair.
"So… Magic?" Dib finally asked as they passed through a third corridor, his head turning slightly to Al.
"D'pends on you really. I knows a lot of magic, runacy, dimensional magic, which is what I focus on, both of those, necromancy, Shauna's fort-fortay-forte, technomagic, summoning, restorative stuff, elemental magic, periodic and mystical, though we generally just call periodic elemental magic alchemy, thaumaturgy, I also use some shadow magic close to a shade's, but I don't know how to teach it 'cuz it's instinctual, the magic of how to summon the representation of your true self to fight for you, called persona, and… There's a lot more stuff for magic, and becoming a master of one means knowing bits and pieces of other and… stuff." Dib almost tripped when Al stopped, and that would've brought Shauna down with him.
"I wonder what that symbol means." Dib's eye's followed the claw to see a door with a couple of rifles or pistols, or whatever Zim's people called their laser weapons, crossed over each other.
"Anywho, I'd suggest you pick, like, three things, none of them being shadow magic and… Hey, Dib, you're little green man from mars is thattaway, he over there not there and… fine." Al stopped watching Zim and returned to Dib's side as he moved to, and through, the door with the guns on it.
"Whoa…" Dib pretty much covered what everyone was thinking when they fully phased into the room. This was definitely an armory. Not a particularly full armory, but an armory none the less.
On one side of the room was what looked like armor stacked on shelves and hanging from racks. Three helmet things that looked to cover most of the head and had one eye right in the center, just over where Dib's nose would be, but perfect for the noseless Irkens. The body armor looked more like a semi-reflective paper thin tunic, done in black and red. There didn't seem to be any leg armor.
The opposite side of the room had what must have been the weapons. Two gun-things. They fired lasers and didn't use combustibles or solid ammunition, so they weren't really guns, a bucket of what looked like silver coins, and three pairs of gloves.
And finally along the backside of the wall were some pieces of gear that didn't really fit either other side. There was a funky looking backpack-like device with a huge hollow section in the middle and what looked like rockets on the side, a multitude of purple gel packs, and some spare Irken uniforms.
Al blocked Dib's vision when he stepped in front of the boy and crouched down to just under eye level.
"What are you doing?" Aside from just being uncomfortable because of the invasion of his bubble, Dib was genuinely curious as to what Al was looking in his coat for.
"You don't have any inside pockets, you know that?" Dib nodded dumbly as Al pulled a white marker out of… Somewhere, and started drawing a circle and some symbols on the inside of his trench coat, just a bit forward and under his left arm.
Then he stuck his fist in the circle, and it didn't cause a bulge to appear on Dib's coat.
"Alright, let's clean this place out." Dib stuffed his own hand into the circle and watched in fascination as his hand disappeared into a black hole, in his coat. He pulled his hand back out, and the black hole turned back into a circle with some squiggles in it.
He was definitely going to learn that.
It turned back into a black hole as soon as Al started shoving a laser blaster into it, and a bucket full of silver coin-like devices, and soon enough the room was empty.
"Can we also do that to Zim's ship?" Dib asked the other male in hope.
"What do you think, Dib?" His head swung to the side when Shauna spoke.
"Um… Yes?" Al was already headed towards the door out.
"Good answer."
AN/ Watched some IZ on youtube… Zim doesn't scream as much as I thought.