Zim had spent a good few minutes while the human was sifting the remains of his acid-ravaged housing unit on his hands and knees on the hard pavement, crawling in tiny, tiny circles until the knees of his pants started to wear through. When Dib answered his call he was in the process of attempting to gather up some very interesting particles he had found. His face was pressed almost to the ground, antennae skipping over the uneven surface like electrified dowsing rods. The particles were alive. Alive and giving him chills of recognition. Dreadful yet nostalgic. His 'spooch couldn't tell him whether to leap or shrink back in fear.
Dib rolled his eyes at the sight. "You know, anyone who happened to walk by and see that would think you'd breathed in something pretty nasty. What the hell are you doing down there?"
Zim sprang up, one hand fisted and cradled into his chest. "Dib, look what Zim's ingeniousness has found!" Dib didn't react sweetly when the hand was thrust palm first into his face, nevertheless he attempted to focus his eyes on it. Beyond a fuzzy green blur crimson lights danced dramatically in his peripheral field.
"Do you hear it? Can your flabby brain-meats comprehend what this monstrosity is?"
Despite the Irken's overflowing enthusiasm/anxiety (whatever it might have been), Dib couldn't quite comprehend what he was supposed to be excited about.
"There's nothing there."
"NONSENSE! Tighten your repulsively vague focus harder!"
"Jeez, okay! I… can see dirt."
"Are you that blind that you cannot hear?"
Maybe the smell in the house really has gone to Zim's head. Dib tried to compromise. "If it's that important, I could put it under one of Dad's microscopes or something..."
"Yes, fine! Bring your clunky magnification-ifier with you, to see it closer!"
Dib looked at him dubiously, hesitating to go back down into the musty basement. "But will you just tell me what the hell I'm supposed to be looking at?"
"NO!" The alien trembled as a sudden desperation ignited his words. "I don't… just… please, human. Find your looking-glass."
"Microscope."
"Please." Zim shifted his eyes to the boys feet, antennae lowering in discomfort. Dib sighed, unsatisfied. There was no bargaining with the Irken. Such secrets! It still felt uncomfortable to actually have to ask Zim for information, especially that which he wouldn't give. Before the incident in Zim's base, Dib had always gotten an earful of it whether he wanted it or not. Hell, Dib would even argue that he missed it. Although they stood face to face, three years hung silently between them. He just needed to know what he'd missed. How else might he try to understand Zim's behavior, his sleeping problems? They were living and sleeping in the same room, for crying out loud.
The human maintained his eyeballing of the alien for what felt like a decent length of time as to communicate his displeasure. Then he turned on his heel and disappeared back into the gloom from whence he'd been summoned.
Had he dawdled a moment inside the entrance, Dib would have heard Zim's own, barely audible, sigh of defeat.
Finding a microscope in Membrane's downstairs lab wouldn't have been too taxing an objective had Zim not given him specifications to take it back out with him. He suspected the alien planned to look at it back at the library. Without electricity, he'd have to find one that used a mirror to direct light onto the viewing platform. Considered old-fashioned equipment for a high-tech society, they had been discontinued years ago despite working well under specified conditions. That may have been due to most microscopes being used in dim laboratories nowadays. What mattered now was if his father was keeping one somewhere. Though he was constantly having to replace his equipment, either due to damage or consumerist nature, there were several thousand boxes of old tools huddled away in the recesses of the lab-rooms, waiting with subdued anticipation for their resurrection day. Dib headed over to the first cluster he could see.
Amidst the dying hulks of water-damaged machines that were bleeping or whining softly in their last efforts to remain functioning, and the remaining puddles of water growing discoloured and stagnant (as groundwater tends to rise upward from the lowest point, the basement had copped the brunt of the flooding), half an hour passed sluggishly before Dib was able to locate anything of remote use. That, when it came, however, wasn't quite the thing he'd had in mind. Hot and bothered, and once again thirsty, the boy shoved aside several more boxes that were soggy and fraying at the seams with heavy equipment. The unmerciful smell and the dampness of the linoleum floor causing the boy after all this time to become mildly irrational, Dib remedied this by cursing the 'spooch out of Zim for both refusing to tell him… things, and sending him back to look for a stupid old microscope. He should try his own luck down in this stench-hole.
Something had caught his eye, poking over the top of a crate and concealed under a thin fold of sheet padding. It was a slightly odd shape for a microscope, but tired as he was from pushing through slime-covered boxes, Dib took delight in proclaiming his triumph to the dire lack of an audience in the room. Under the sheet he could see the object's uppermost end curving over into a stylised hook formation. Microscope!
He lifted the fold.
For several seconds only numbness could penetrate Dib's brain, but which then called the cue for the heat filtering gently out of him to be replaced by a dreadful chill. Nightmarish memories followed. Ugh~! God, Dad…
Dib slowly replaced the padding over the offensively microscope-shaped object, but his eyes, rather than moving on to something more appealing, took root on the shape roosted innocently in its disintegrating nest of artificial lattice-woven fibres. He couldn't believe his father had actually built a replica of that horror. Fate, when it saw fit, could be a truly sadistic bastard.
Yet, the devious corner of his mind whispered murkily, perhaps this discovery could be utilised to his advantage. Nightmares. Who did he know…
"What is TAKING you so long?!" Zim shouted at the doorway. Yet again it refused to disgorge the boy who had gone inside. The continuing lack of response drove him to tug down on his antennae, which managed to block white noise out for about 0.08 seconds. At least his PAK still had the capacity to count. The boy had to come out soon. He'd be swallowed up by the hideous liquid of unmatched toxicity – Zim would have to rescue him again! He didn't want to go back into that water, his burns still itched from the last time! Stupid broken PAK! Stupid human, forcing Zim to wait out in this death and noise-ridden street.
The particles he'd found were nestled carefully in his still-fisted hand. He'd made sure not to drop any. Putting them in one of the pockets he'd discovered in this odd, smelly jacket he-was-still-unaware-of-the origins-of would surely result in their being lost. And yet he wished there were some way to stop his AI reacting in such an inappropriate manner to the miasmic signature they gave off. Should he feel servile to a cluster of dust-sized specks? Of course not! Was it the Empire's idea of a trick to play on their decommissioned soldier? The thought made his lip tremble. He needed to look closer, much closer, at the source of the energy signature. What looked like inanimate dirt could be a weapon, some kind of virus transmitter! Hurry up, Dib!
A shapeless cloth billowed into sight first, followed by a scythe. Zim had witnessed enough terrible Halloween rituals to have a fair idea of what such a sighting entailed, and in his recent state of mind, he couldn't say he wasn't familiar with the feeling it was expected to bring. Drawing a rather ragged understanding from what 'historical' sources he'd been assigned, he'd expected to feel either fear or acceptance when he looked into the face of Death. Not this… sense of a lack of fulfillment. He'd lasted this long, and what was to show for it? If I'm to die, I want a good explanation first!
Before he could voice this philosophical proclamation to the apparition, two tawny eyes faded into view, followed by a tired huff as something heavy thunked down inside the shadowed doorway. A crooked, bedraggled and smelly Dib stumbled into view, holding his head as though tipsy and squinting out at the bright rust-tinted light.
"God damn it, Zim, I'm not going back down there. It smells like Death has been through there on a gondola."
Zim's antennae perked up. "You found the thing of use?"
Dib gave him a strained grin. "Yeah, I found it. But Zim," his demeanour became more serious, "regardless of whether you really care to tell me or not, I want to know what's worrying you. I want you to answer any questions I might have. As a condition." Tact was not one of the human's better skills.
Zim narrowed his eyes, swallowing a small lump that was slithering up his throat. "Or what?"
"Or I don't give you the microscope. I don't help you find out what you're hearing."
"You're giving me an ultimatum?"
Dib's look became stern. "If it comes to that."
Zim nibbled his lip apprehensively, hissing out through his teeth. The nerve of that earth-beast and his 'terms'! What did he have to gain from Zim's remembering a past that he'd tried to bury? His faulty PAK screamed a trap!
"Well," Dib said at length, "I'm going to take the stuff back to your place. You can figure out your answer by then." He disappeared once more to retrieve the heavy items he had put down inside. A cloth fluttered.
As soon as he reemerged, Zim was onto it.
"Aargh!"
"Is that the microscope?" Zim enquired, hanging by his claws to the edge of the box Dib was attempting to carry.
"Urgh… yes! Would you please get down?" The human groaned under the extra weight piled on top of his supplies.
"I just want to know," Zim said with a righteous frown, "why it's hidden under a cloth."
Dib lowered the Irken and the box to the pavement with a growl, straightening his back in several jerky movements before muttering something about Zim trying to give him a hernia.
"The cloth?" He blinked down at it, fluttering as though trying to reveal what was underneath. He bent and patted it down. The alien frowned some more. "It's to keep the equipment out if the sun, of course," He smiled in a way that looked awfully like it wasn't intended to seem sheepish. "I don't want it to heat up too much."
Once again tackling the dangerously overloaded box, Dib continued his difficult trek back across the town. Zim followed close behind, sending his back a questioning, but unacknowledged, grimace.
It seemed Dib wasn't the only one with a thread to pick.
A/N: We-e-ell fortunately it didn't take me so long to update this time, but I do apologise for another confusing and cliffhanger-ish chapter. I don't intend for this story to stretch on for so long all the way through - in fact I'm hoping in the next few chapters that the plot will speed up significantly (did I say this before... I can't remember? o_o). Last night I received some fine feedback after getting my mum to proofread this chapter, and I hope to start picking up on the flaws she pointed out. My goal in writing fanfiction is, after all, to develop and correct what skills I have, and with (much) more practice the flow of this story should improve as I continue to write. I can only hope. XD
As always, thank you for tuning in! Hope you enjoyed this chapter :3