I write a lot of stuff don't I? Bah, I write because I care... I guess. That or my head would explode if I kept all my ideas locked up inside it. BUT WHATEVER! This is an update for the chapter so... YEAH.
Enjoy and stuff!
Okay, this was starting to get a little weird. Dib looked up at the green house, back to the address in his hand, than back to the house. He... really couldn't believe this place existed. It looked liked it was designed by a three year old, plus, it was creepy as hell.
What the was with the gnomes? And the Earth flag? And he considered his apartment to be run down. Wow. Dib gathered himself however, this was the kind of stuff that'd he'd been in uni for. Besides, again his inner child was urging him on, telling him to investigate, to find out, to uncover the mysteries of this strange little boy.
He pulled his black jacket around him tighter, wishing that his pockets were deeper. He felt the odd need to have more than just his keys and iphone with him. Still, he could at least note down anything he found weird and report back.
Walking up to the front door, he forced himself to ignore the eyes of the gnomes. He could swear that they were watching him. Damn this was creepy, no wonder Zim had problems, he'd be depressed too if he had to live in this crazy place.
He knocked on the door and waited patiently, wondering just what he was about to walk into here. God he felt like a slave before lions, this house looked liked it could chew him alive if he walked into it's horrible jagged mouth.
There was a pause before suddenly the door was pulled open and standing before Dib were two... people? He couldn't tell, their eyes were dead, their grins seemed painted on and their movements jagged and strange, as if their bodies were only getting echos of what their brain was telling them.
"Welcome home, son!" The mother and father spoke in unison with an almost auto-tuned voice.
"... kaaay," Dib replied slowly, raising his hands up just slightly in some kind of unconscious defence. "Erm, Mr and Mrs... Zim?" Yeah, it was weird talking to two people who had no last name, "I'm Dib Membrane, I'm your son's skool counsellor."
They must have known about him, the skool had sent them a letter saying why he was being counselled, and Dib assumed they'd signed the form saying it was okay. Although he now suspected that Zim may well have forged the signatures.
"What has Billy done this time?" The man asked, waving his... clamp? Why did he have a clamp for a hand?
"No, not Billy, I'm talking about your son, Zim." Dib insisted, wondering if he started running now maybe he could be back in his car before they tried to abduct him.
"You're so skinny!" The woman suddenly cried. "You need something to eat!"
Dib went to protest but the woman grabbed him by the shoulders and practically threw him into the house. He went flying onto a surprisingly comfortable but very dirty couch. However, he quickly recovered and jumped up, now utterly convinced that he should probably phone the police or the crazy house or something.
"What the hell is wrong with you people?" He shouted suddenly, "I just want to talk about your son!"
"Mastah has gone out for SNAAACKS!" A sudden high pitched voice came from behind him, "He's gettin me a slurpie!"
The counsellor spun around, wondering just who the hell this was, however, he saw no one, well, that is until he looked down and spotted a green dog. Standing on it's hind legs. With a zipper on the front of it's incredibly dirty fur.
His stomach dropped for a moment. "Did... you just speak?"
"HAAAAI!" The dog leapt up and grabbed his leg tightly. "You're head is BEEEG."
Okay Dib, stay calm, this can all be explained with logic and reason and wasn't just some waking nightmare he was having. Either way he knew he now had two missions, one was to get the hell out of this house, the other was to find Zim and detain him until social services bulldozed this place into the ground.
No wonder the poor kid was so messed up!
"Come on, let's make mashed potatoes! With Soap!" The parents rushed past him and Dib suddenly noticed that they didn't actually have any legs, just... a wheel. The realisation hit him like the force of a bomb.
They were robots. All of these things, they were all robots. No wonder they acted so weirdly, their AI must be breaking!
Slowly a smile formed on his face and he relaxed, although not completely, he'd seen enough of his dad's robots go insane with just simple errors in their AI to know not to let his guard down around broken machinery. "Oh, okay, Zim's home life is run by machines..." This brought a small frown to his face, "That... isn't normal."
"Imma not a machine!" The dog shouted suddenly from his leg, "Imma Gir!"
"Gir?" Dib raised an eyebrow at this, looking down at the strange little android, "Well, erm, Gir, how about you show me around the house?"
The dog suddenly jumped back and in a terrifying display of aggression, the eyes of the dog grew a vicious red and from his head sprang about six different weapons, at least two guns and the rest seemed to be cutting weapons, one loud one was a buzzsaw. "NONE MAY ENTER THE MASTERS BASE!"
"AGH!" Dib jumped back, putting his hands up quickly, "Alright, alright!"
The weapons vanished and the dog's eyes went back to being that strange cyan, "Say pleeeaaase."
"... please?" These machines were seriously broken, he'd never seen such a strong case for regular debugging in his life.
"OKAY," The robot-dog turned and pointed to the ceiling, "This is master's living roooom." He began walking on, Dib following tentatively behind, wondering just if this was such a good idea or not. And yet, inside he felt so excited, this was incredible, he'd never heard of machines raising a boy, but yet, he knew it was something deeper.
Why raised by robots? Why the dog? Why the disguises? What exactly was going on in this strange home?
"And this is the masters kitcheeeen," Gir waved his arms about and Dib looked on, watching the two robo-parents smashing into each other in front of the over, arguing to each other about who was to 'cook the roast'.
The little green dog walked towards the toilet, wait, what? Why was there a toilet in his kitchen? However, this question was answered when Gir pushed the flusher, and the toilet vanished under the floor, being replaced by an eerily lit lift.
Dib's jaw almost dropped the the ground. What... was this place? He was beginning to suspect that something much more terrible than just ignoring a child was going on here, and considering how horrible he thought ignoring children was, it was pretty damn terrible.
He carefully followed the little green robot, standing on the elevator. It kicked into motion, taking them down and shutting over the top of them. Everything was now a strange pink with purple and red flashes.
"This is masters liiiiift," Gir explained in his strange high pitched drone, "It takes us to places!"
"I can see," Dib mumbled, wondering why the same strange insignia kept flashing past him. His inner child was screaming the answer at him, but his adult mind refused to listen. It was just... too crazy.
The elevator stopped and a pair of large metal doors opened to reveal a long corridor that reminded Dib far too much of H.R. Giger art. No, no, he couldn't be that, it was stupid. This could all be explained somehow. Maybe his real parents built all this, or maybe he had built it all himself... somehow.
"This is masters walky space!" Gir cried out, bouncing forwards, "It's for walkin in!"
Dib followed slowly, marvelling at the strange architecture of the laboratory. It was most certainly a lab as well, he'd seen enough of them in his lifetime to know a place of experimentation and knowledge when he saw one. Though it was like no lab he'd ever seen before in his life. The very design seemed like something Telsa would dream of.
It felt so... natural, but not. A weird and almost scary mix of organic looking shapes and cold machinery. A far cry from the sterile, square and absolutist look of every other lab he'd been in.
Gir led him into a huge open space, in the middle was a strange looking object. It reminded Dib of the prototype personalised spacecraft his father had been constructing lately. Except... blobbier if that made any sense.
"And dis is mastah's flyin roooom," Gir waved his stubby little arms in the air before walking on,
However, as he did so, a sudden loud voice rang out through the base, making Dib jump. "Master Zim has returned home."
"... he has to explain this," Dib announced to himself, his old habits coming back. It seemed that in the face of these amazing mysterious, this fantastic base and all within it, he was falling back into his old ways... his inner investigator was springing up. "He has to. This is too amazing..."
"Mastah will be down in a moment," Gir replied with the wave of an arm, "Lemmie call him. MASTAAAAAAH!"
The sound of Gir's shouting was almost deafening, hell, it was so loud that Dib practically dived onto the floor and covered his ears with his hands to stop them from bursting. Damn that robot was annoyingly loud.
However, from somewhere within the home he heard a small whirring, and he knew that Zim was coming down the elevator.
He felt weirdly nervous and giddy. How was Zim going to explain about all this?Considering the boy had stormed out on him in their last session, he may not be best pleased to find the counsellor now standing in the secret laboratory buried under his home. He would have to handle this very, very carefully.
"GIR!" A shout rang out through the house, "I thought I told you to stay upstairs and guard the base from intruders!"
The small child walked down the hall, however, he seemed to have his hands on his eyes. Wait, why did he have his hands on his eyes? And where was his hair?
Then Zim looked up and Dib didn't see the young boy he'd been counselling for the past few weeks.
He saw ruby red eyes and a pair of sharp, insecticidal looking antennae.
Horror filled Dib as he realised something which his instincts had been screaming at him this whole time, but his adult mind refusing to believe in.
Zim was an alien.
Enjoy that? Well I didn't. So far it's the weakest chapter, but that's because I fell out with this story about halfway through writing it. I hated this story so much that I thought about deleting it from the site, I was that angry.
Why I hear you ask? Well, I won't tell you, but it was essentially because it was the style of the story.
But I am over that now. Either way I feel this chapter is... kinda short, uneventful and not very good, so I ended it on a cliffhanger to keep people excited.
NEXT CHAPTER IS ALL ABOUT ZIM AND DIB AND ALIENS AND STUFF WUUUUUT.
Till next time kids! Read, review, all that good stuff!