He slowly turned the page and watched the words meld together as he vainly fought to pay attention to the book. Somewhere on the other side of the park, there was a loud explosion that put the book at hand way down on Dib's to do list. "Finally," he breathed and got up.
It took him awhile to make it over to where the explosion was, but once he got there, he didn't regret it. A pretty girl flew over head and unleashed several glowing bolts at the target obscured in the dust. Once the dust cleared he saw that her target was a tall, purple alien that looked as though it saw better days. He was disappointed that it wasn't Zim, but doing something was nice.
"Hey! Kid, get out of here!" someone yelled. Dib turned to see a tall, African-American cyborg being beat down by another alien, identical to the one that the girl was fighting.
"COOL!" Dib yelled and jumped up into a tree to avoid getting smashed. "I was saving this for Zim, but I'm ready to do anything at this point," he muttered and pulled out several small round balls that he had invented to capture Zim. He threw them at the aliens when they weren't too close to the people they were fighting and a large spurt of foam came out and caught them in a sticky mess.
"Neat," Robin said under his breath as he came down from his own perch in a different tree.
"Awesome, they worked! Wow, something I made didn't blow up in my face!" Dib cheered. "Great, now Zim has to do something," he sighed as he jumped down from the tree.
Beast Boy and Raven appeared next to the other three and looked at the odd boy. "Who are you?" Robin asked. "And how do you know Zim?"
"You know Zim?" Dib asked. "Huh," he shrugged. "Well, I'm Dib. I kind of try and make sure that Zim doesn't actually end up taking over the world. Are you trying to defeat him as well, or what?"
"We're the Teen Titans," Robin explained. "And no. Actually, he's kind of helped us before."
"Help?" Dib asked unbelievingly.
"It wasn't intentional," Robin assured him. "In any case, he's been claiming that he was going to destroy the Vertians," Robin pointed at the aliens at Dib's feet, "so he could take over the world."
"Yeup, sounds like him. So that's what he's been up to," Dib stroked his chin. "Well, have you seen him lately?"
"No, we haven't," Robin replied. "Actually, he's mentioned you a few times. Have you seen him?"
"Can't say I have," Dib frowned. "Ever since skool let out, he's been in his house. I kinda figured he was plotting something… or something. I don't know."
"What do you do?" Raven asked.
Dib puffed out his chest proudly. "I'm a paranormal investigator," he said happily.
Robin raised an eyebrow. "Like, ghosts, aliens, demons…"
"Yeah, pretty much," Dib laughed. "Only now… well, now it's more all about Zim. Fighting him, keeping him from taking over the world, making sure he doesn't crash into the lake and pissing him off because I saved him," Dib smiled at the memory. "That was awesome," he chuckled. "I used to be totally obsessed with proving he was an alien, and the existence of any other paranormal things I could find, but now it's just about messing around with Zim. I don't know, it's more comfortable that way. We both have our niches, and it's just kind of the way things worked out."
"You mean you're not trying to capture him anymore?" Robin asked. "Why not?"
Dib frowned. "I found out some… stuff," he murmured giving them a non-committal shrug. "He…" Dib sighed. "Okay, this sounds totally weird, even to me, but he doesn't deserve it. Besides, I get really bored without him around to blow stuff up. This town is made of annoying and stupid, and no one ever does anything."
Beast Boy laughed. "The people here don't seem very observant. Normally there are like… ten police cars around us after an explosion like that."
"Exactly my point," Dib said dryly. "I still collect paranormal stuff, but I don't try and oust Zim anymore. It's not worth it."
"Do you know where he lives?" Robin asked.
Dib nodded, "Sure do. Most obvious house in town. It's green, but you know, God forbid if anyone else noticed it."
Cyborg chuckled, "Frustrating?"
"You have no idea," Dib muttered as he rolled his eyes. "It's nice to finally meet someone aside from my terrifying sister who believes that Zim is an alien."
"How could you not notice?" Raven asked, disbelievingly.
"I KNOW!" Dib sighed and laced his fingers behind his head. "But no one else notices it. Not that it matters anymore, I guess. You think he's bad now? Believe it or not, he's somewhat mellowed over the past four years."
"Really?" Starfire asked.
"Mmhm," Dib muttered. "Soooo… can I ask why you guys are floating, glowing, green and dressed like that?"
"Your investigating skills amaze me," Raven muttered.
Dib narrowed his eyes at Raven but Robin shook his head to dismiss the comment. "Sure, we'll explain but you can't print it or anything."
"Nah, I got over that stage a year ago," Dib laughed. "Come on, Zim's house is this way."
A few minutes later, Dib stood in front of Zim's now normal looking, pale blue house and frowned. "Huh… he must have done some re-decorating. That's weird," he murmured to himself and looked up at the door puzzled. Dib shrugged then knocked on the door.
A boy, about the same height as Zim opened the door. He had blue eyes and black hair and was wearing black jeans and a t-shirt. Dib had to do a double take to make sure that there was a Pak on his back before he could convince himself that it was really Zim. "Huh?" he asked.
"Yes?" Zim asked. "Who are you?"
Everyone stood still for a long moment before Gir ran out of the house. "Big headed kid! Master's not normal!" he sobbed and stood behind Dib.
"What do you mean, who am I?" Dib asked, ignoring Gir. "I've been your arch nemesis for four years. Zim, come on! What's going on here? Your disguise is actually… good."
"How did you know my name…" Zim asked suspiciously in a quiet voice.
"Because I know you!" Dib yelled. "I've known you for four years! What happened, did you loose your memory or something?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Zim said in a tone that could almost be considered polite. "Now, if you'll excuse me," he said, starting to shut the door.
Dib stuck his foot in the door to keep Zim from closing it. "Zim, I know what you are. You are an alien Irken defect, you are bent on taking over the world but could never actually hope to do so because your attention span is about two seconds long, you have your two robot minions, Gir and Minimoose and you are at least three of 'earth's' years older then me even though you pretend to be 16."
Zim opened the door and glared at Dib. "Who are you?" he snarled. Gir whimpered and edged behind Dib's legs.
"Who am I?" Dib yelled. "What happened to you Zim? Why aren't you ranting or something?"
Zim pressed a button on his Pak and his holographic disguise disappeared to reveal his Irken form. Dib recoiled when he saw Zim's cold, bottomless eyes. "What did they do to you?" he asked softly.
"They?" Robin asked, puzzled.
"Get out of the way!" Raven yelled and transported everyone away from the doorstep as Zim launched a beam from his spider legs.
Dib blinked when he realized he was in a different part of the yard, looking at Zim from the side. He growled and pulled out two of his foam bursting pellets. "Leave this to me, I've fought him before and I know how to get him."
"All right," Cyborg said softly. "But be careful, something happened…"
"Memory erased…" Dib hissed. "His leaders probably did this."
"His leaders?" Starfire asked, obviously shocked.
"I'll explain later," Dib said hurriedly and jumped at Zim before he could attack anyone else.
"How did you know that I was an alien?" Zim hissed as Dib tried to trip up one of his spider legs.
"Well, since the theory that your memories are erased apparently hasn't occurred to you," Dib countered, "I am a paranormal investigator and this is my job."
Zim snarled and tried to stab Dib with his weapons, but Dib was too used to this situation and had long since learned how to dodge. Whenever Zim was supported by all four spider legs, all he had to do was go towards the opposite leg that Zim was attacking him with. That way it would throw Zim off balance.
When Zim did just that, Dib threw his invention below Zim and watched as the alien's legs got caught up in the sticky foam. Zim toppled over and landed face first into the mess. Dib pulled a small tazer out of his back pocket and walked towards the seething Zim. "For what it's worth, sorry," he said quietly and put the live end to Zim's Pak, knocking him offline and into unconsciousness.
"Mastah!" Gir yelled and ran over to where his master lay, still. "That was bad, big headed human!" Gir yelled, almost angrily.
"Am I being lectured by Zim's insane robot?" Dib asked, raising an eyebrow as he pulled out a solution he created to melt away the foam in case one exploded in his pocket.
"So it would appear," Raven said slowly.
"What's wrong with him?" Beast Boy asked.
Dib sighed as he poured the solution into a handkerchief and started to wipe the foam off from around Zim's body, trying his best not to make contact with Zim's sensitive skin. "I don't know," Dib sighed. "But I…" Dib frowned. "Well, there's one pretty big reason that I decided that I didn't want to capture Zim anymore," he started as he pulled Zim out of the mess he created.
Zim's mechanical legs retracted into his Pak, but the short Irken remained still. "Mastah…" Gir said softly.
"Don't worry Gir," Dib said, feeling weird as he tried to assure the annoying robot. "I'll try and get him back to normal."
"You will?" Robin asked.
Dib shrugged. "Zim was an individual, he was different. His planet tried to take that away from him. He kind of deserves to get back his memories back," Dib said with a frown as he cradled Zim's body and stood up. "It's not fair that they can just take that away because he has a personality."
"Can you?" Gir asked. "Make master the way he was?"
"I can very well try," Dib sighed. "If I succeed though, he's going to be so pissed at me," Dib chuckled although it had no humor in it.
"How do you know that it was his leaders?" Cyborg asked.
"Because, about six months ago I found out that Zim's what's known as a 'defective' Irken. Of course, at first I thought that this meant he had something wrong with his personality or something wrong with his programming. But after I watched a few of his calls to his leaders, I realized something," Dib sighed as he carried Zim away from his house and began to walk down the street.
Just at that moment, a purple blur came out of Zim's house and began to squeak angrily at Dib. Dib blinked a few times before he realized that it was Minimoose who was yelling at him. "Calm down," he told the small creature. "I'm not planning to hurt him… er… more."
The small plush looking robot continued to yell at Dib in whatever language he spoke until Gir jumped on him and grinned. "Dibbie said he'd help master be the way he was," Gir said excitedly.
Everyone watched as Minimoose seemed to deflate and sink to the ground sadly. Starfire couldn't help herself, he was just too cute. She walked over and picked up Minimoose and hugged him. "It is all right, strange floating moose creature, your master is not a very nice person, but he needs help and we help people no matter what."
Minimoose squeaked once and floated out of Starfire's arms to nose Zim once before squeaking again and floating next to Gir. "He says 'okie dokie!'" Gir said, giving Dib the thumbs up.
The strange group continued to walk and float down the street. "Realized what?" Raven prompted Dib's explanation.
"Huh?" Dib asked. "Oh, right. Anyways, I realized that Zim was considered defective because he had a personality. And, to some degree he also has emotions. Obviously, he cares for Gir and Minimoose and he loves himself," Dib laughed. "But, this made him imperfect according to his society. At some point, I found transcripts of a trial that Zim was on. He was declared defective and they tried to… deactivate him, which I think means they tried to execute him. But somehow he wasn't and he just continued to live his life."
"How do you ignore something like that?" Beast Boy asked.
"I don't ever want to know how Zim's thought process goes," Dib sighed exasperatedly while rolling his eyes. "He's still totally loyal to the Irken empire too. I don't know why, but he is. Anyways, after I found all that out, I just didn't really… feel like trying to capture him anymore."
"I can… understand why," Robin admitted. "That's actually kind of sad."
"I know," Dib sighed. "Anyways, that's why things kind of have devolved the way they have. Besides, I'll take an incompetent Zim with a personality over a personality-less competent soldier Zim any day. I like it when I have a chance of defeating him."
Cyborg laughed. "You did a pretty good job today," he pointed out.
"Because I've fought him like that before. If that was a space ship battle, I have a bad feeling I would have lost," Dib sighed. "Where are we going?" he asked after awhile.
"Your house?" Raven suggested.
Dib looked at the unconscious Zim in his arms and bit his lower lip. "Actually, that might not be the best idea," he admitted. "My dad's home this weekend and he's a scientist. I'm not sure if he can fool himself that Zim's not an alien without his disguise."
Robin looked thoughtful. "Well, Titan's Tower is about a three hour ride from here. Think he'll stay out that long?" he asked, looking at Zim.
"Until I reactivate his Pak, he's out," Dib replied.
"You sure?" Cyborg asked Robin quietly.
"Yes," Robin said with a tiny grin. "We're the good guys, remember?"
Dib laughed a little. "Helping those that you don't like is kinda what being human is all about, isn't it?" he asked.
Robin nodded and smiled at Dib for the teen's sake. "At least you're human enough to do so," he told him.
When they began to land at Titan's Tower, Dib couldn't help it, he gawked. Sure he heard the vague news report about some kids helping to catch a bad guy but he never actually paid attention to it. As far as he was concerned, the media lied anyways, just one of several big conspiracy theories he was into. Although, lying media wasn't much of a theory anymore.
Cyborg noticed his open staring and laughed from his pilot chair of the plane. "Yeah, it's pretty cool, isn't it?" he asked.
"You live there?" Dib asked.
"Home sweet home," Beast Boy said happily. "Titan's Tower. Cyborg's got tons of tools and stuff and he makes the coolest things. Like the T-car."
"T-car? You made a car?" Dib asked, clearly impressed.
"I made the thing you're sitting in," Cyborg said with a grin. "I like making stuff."
"I make stuff if it has to do with countering Zim," Dib admitted. "Or if it has to do with paranormal science in general. I like that."
"We can tell," Raven pointed out in her bland voice.
Needless to say, the inside was even more impressive. Dib looked around with his mouth slightly open at the impressive 'dig' the Titans had. "Wow, you have all this?"
"Yeah, pretty sweet, huh?" Beast Boy asked. "The hero thing is pretty cool."
Dib rolled his eyes. "Look at me, I save the planet all the time and everyone thinks I'm insane and I'm saving my worst enemy."
"But look at all the ammo you'll have in your next banter," Cyborg pointed out. "Hey! I saved your life you know!"
Dib laughed and laid Zim gently on the couch where Minimoose and Gir immediately rushed to his side. "Point well taken," he told Cyborg. "I may even get that reaction in a few hours if all goes well."
"What do you need?" Robin asked.
Dib sighed and pulled a black laptop out of his backpack. "Right now, this," he said. "Zim's Pak is a computer, essentially. I need to see if I can't restore his memory somehow."
Beast Boy's ears dipped slightly. "Wait, you mean they actually erased his memory. Like a computer file?"
Dib nodded as he plugged his laptop into Zim's Pak. "Yeah. Probably. Hold on, let's boot up my computer and see what happened."
Everyone leaned over to see what was going on as Zim's computer booted up. There was a small smiley face icon that grinned with a caption that read 'please wait while we process your information.' Ten minutes later, the caption read the same and the smiley face seemed a little less happy and a little more annoying to the teens waiting for the computer. "I guess Paks take a while to process," Cyborg said slowly.
"Apparently," Raven replied dryly.
Finally the computer finished processing whatever it was trying to process and opened up onto the main screen. Dib opened a file and typed something into the DOS command, forcing the computer to accept Zim's connection. Another screen came up with coding on it that may have well been written in Japanese for 4/5ths of the Titans for all they could read. Cyborg however leaned over in interest. "Wow," he said slowly.
"I know. This is… damn," Dib said softly.
"Dude, it's a bunch of numbers, symbols and letters!" Beast Boy said exasperatedly. "You can't even read anything!"
Dib and Cyborg gave Beast Boy twin death glares and returned to the screen. "Think you can find what they did?" Cyborg asked.
Dib began to scroll through the coding and frowned. "Yeah, I think so. He narrowed his eyes and stared intently as he scrolled. Finally he yelled "AHA!" making all the Titans jump about a foot in the air. Dib looked at them guiltily and shrugged. "Sorry, I'm used to ranting at my self. Anyways," he glanced back at the screen and sighed. "Good news and bad news."
"Good news is you found the things you want, right?" Robin asked.
"Hey, you're pretty good," Dib said with a grin. "Yeah."
"And the bad news?" Starfire asked.
"It's encoded," Dib answered with a significant nod at the screen of gibberish. "Like, impossibly encoded. It may take me years to break it. I don't know," he said with a frown. "I thought I would have to restore his memories from a deleted file, not break them out of an encode."
"Can I try?" Cyborg asked.
"Can you read the Irken programming?" Dib asked dubiously.
"If you're there telling me what I need to know, sure," Cyborg replied. "Want to help?"
Dib handed the laptop over. "Be my guest," he said and pointed at the first line. "Okay, I'm not 100 sure, but this seems to be where it begins."
"Right," Cyborg said and began to type. The rest of the Titans quickly disbanded to mull around while Dib and Cyborg worked together to get Zim back online.
About ten hours, several sodas, many curses, and a broken encode later, Zim's memories and personality files were unlocked and reintroduced into the Pak's programming. Dib unhooked the computer from Zim's Pak and sighed. "All that's left is rebooting his Pak, I guess," he said quietly.
"What's wrong?" Cyborg asked.
"Zim… well. He can't ignore it anymore, can he?" Dib asked. "He's going to be upset, that's for sure."
"Well, at least they didn't completely deactivate him. That counts for something," Robin replied, handing Dib a cup of coffee, which the teen took gratefully.
"Yeah, you're probably right," Dib admitted while sipping on the hot liquid. "All right," he said and tapped the top most dot on Zim's pack. It glowed red and Dib scooted back on the couch.
"Re-booting complete," it said and blinked once. Again, Zim's Pak sent out the electric shock and jolted the poor Irken's body back into life once more.
Bleh, I don't know what to say about this chapter. It was needed for the character development but...I wanna go back to teh funny. Wah. I promise it'll get humorous soon, I WANT to write the humor. It's more fun to write Zim as his ranting, insane self and make up words for no reason.
Also, I hate the way the fight scene came out >. hate hate hate. However, after letting it sit on my desktop for DAYS I just couldn't change it. I may try later but I figured... better to have one crappy fight scene then give up on the fic and not update anymore. Ah well. And, yes, Dib invents things, because lord knows he's smart enough too. I mean, if the kid can magically use alien technology, he sure as hell can make weapons to fight Zim with. (I want his little inviso stealth suit he had in Zim Eats Waffles, god the pranks I could play with that thing.)
Anyways, hope you liked this chapter.