The next thing Dib knows, he's running through the rain to his house with what he desperately hopes is an unconscious Zim bundled in his trenchcoat and clutched to his chest. Zim shivers, smoking, pakless. The last Dib saw before wrapping him up, he was covered in what looked like chemical burns.
The pet robots follow Dib, trying to keep up. Gir screams worried questions and cries. Minimoose just screams.
Dib has technically carried Zim before (surprise jump attacks, trying to throw Zim off off himself or something else.) He never weighed much, but he weighs next to nothing without his pak. Gir helpfully provides comparison by flinging himself onto Dib in a flying leap and feeling as heavy as a minifridge. He climbs up to Dib's shoulder, wailing at his unconscious master and begging 'Mary' to 'please wake baby up now,' emphasizing his distress by pulling on Dib's hair and shaking him.
Both robots seem fine in the rain somehow; it's ridiculous that Zim is the only one that isn't built to survive it. How the hell have Irkens survived long enough to spit Zim out into the universe if they're this fragile and dissolve in fucking water? Do other planets not have water? Is Zim just allergic to 70% of Earth? Who the fuck sent him on a mission to this planet if he was? Did they not know? Were they trying to kill him off?
The door of the Membrane residence slams open. Dib rushes in with what looks to Gaz like the most annoying toys ever produced, clutching a bundle to his chest. Probably another coyote Dib claims is "Bigfeet's dog, and if we can get it to track him down it will be a breakthrough in paranormal science! Just think of it Gaz!" Or a haunted blender. Or a lizard he thought Zim gave birth to: "It's the exact same shade of green, Gaz!" She congratulates herself on her serene, never-ending patience. A lesser sibling would have killed Dib long ago. But no. Not Gaz. She allowed the wretched, insane creature her father claimed was related to her by blood to annoy her, to exist in her presence, to make her late to buy game consoles. To eat HER food. To interrupt HER games. To choose HALF OF THE FAMILY NIGHTS OUT, and to try his damndest to get the other half canceled by wandering off to find Useless Bullshit.
Gaz even played Bloatykart with him sometimes. She was a goddamn saint.
And her thanks for all her years of noble sacrifice? Two incredibly loud bundles of wires and metal and fabric and rainwater being thrown onto her lap (in the MIDDLE. Of a FUCKING MINIBOSS. Not a full boss. But STILL), and her sorry excuse for a brother hollering something about "Entertain them Gaz, I need to get him dry before he dies!" as he runs upstairs.
Gaz takes a deep breath. Her therapist would be so fucking proud. Through the blinding fury, despite her brother's selfishness threatening to ruin her weekend, she stays calm. She does Not throw the screaming toy monstrosities into the wall. Instead, she slowly and deliberately grabs a blanket, wraps it around the wriggling, soaked mess Dib dumped on her, and tosses it to the side.
Gaz gets up and heads for the stairs (so, so calmly), dripping what she hoped was only rainwater as she goes. A small crash and soft clanking sounds behind her cause her to turn around. She glares down at a tiny metal thing, dragging the blanket behind it with the help of a floating lump. The metal thing squeaks something about its master and sleeping and explosions and peanuts and Mary. The lump peeks out from under the blanket and mews in agreement. Gaz is so tired. After another deep breath, she scales the stairs at a slow, even, brooding pace, the little robomonsters right at her heels. She doesn't even have the comfort of Dib going off to college someday. God must hate gamers.
Opening Dib's bedroom door (so slowly, so calmly) reveals her freak brother stripping soaked clothes off of what appears to be a dying Zim, sprawled catatonic on Dib's bed. Gaz scans the room to make sure she isn't missing any details, as surely, there must be some reason that this bullshit is happening in her home.
Nope, nothing. Just her brother enthusiastically ripping the clothes off of a shivering, shell-shocked alien. No reason. No context. Not even the decency to lock the door and give her a plausible way to Not See This.
Gaz speaks in a VERY calm, VERY even tone.
"What. The fuck. Are you. Doing."
Dib jumped like he had just been caught, you know, ripping the clothes off of his unconscious classmate. Normal stuff, surely Gaz would understand. "Gaz, it's not what it looks like — he's sick!"
"Mmhmm."
"No, seriously! He's allergic to water! If I can't get the wet clothes off, he dies, Gaz!"
"Mmhmm." Gaz deftly pushes Gir away as he tries to crawl in between her boots to "Help his master".
Dib makes a noise of frustration, and exhaustion, and agitation. All the bad feelings. He just wanted to have a normal, minor-injury-causing fight with Zim. Maybe to steal some equipment, or break into his base. And now Zim is probably dead.
No, wait. Zim gasps for air. He's alive. Dib yanks off Zim's wig and pulls the slipping, disgustingly gooey contact lenses away from Zim's burning? Melting? Skin. "PLEASE, Gaz, you can kill me after this, I'll buy you whatever game you want –"
"Dad already buys me whatever games I want, dumbass."
"Then you can kill me! Or something! Just please, get me some towels! He's fucking melting!"
A long few seconds tick by. Gaz considers murder, but they don't have GameSlave 5s in prison. So she rolls her eyes at this fucking bullshit of the day, and stomps off to grab some towels.
The Gaz-barrier gone, Gir barrels into the room, followed by a blanket-covered Minimoose, both hellbent on destructive attempts to help their beloved bug-gremlin. Gir grabs random 'medical supplies' (a pen, a mothman stuffie, a dirty trench coat, a possessed plate of nachos sealed in resin) and Minimoose blindly slams into every solid object they can find, slapping Dib and Zim's soon-to-be-corpse with a sopping wet blanket.
"GAZ, PLEASE TAKE THEM WITH YOU! I'M SO SORRY, BUT PLEASE! I'LL OWE YOU FOREVER!"
"You alrEADY FUCKING DO!"
Gaz storms back in, grabs the sobbing chaos bots, and drags them out. Gir grabs onto the door frame in a last attempt to help. He wails "THIS FOR YOUUU, MONKEY!" and chucks the mothman stuffie at Zim before being yanked off the doorframe and hauled away by Gaz, patron saint of Not Committing Murder when it is So Justly Deserved.
The stuffie manages to hit Dib somehow, bouncing off his very normal sized head before landing on Zim's stomach. In Zim's first semi-conscious movement of the past half hour, he curls around the stuffie (involuntarily? For comfort? Do Irkens need comfort?). Dib's favorite stuffie, his prized possession, the only positive acknowledgement his father has ever given to his love of the paranormal. If Zim gets goopy green flesh on Mothy that won't wash off, Dib resolves to nurse him back to health for the sole purpose of murdering him. He tries to tug the stuffie out of Zim's arms, but his little claws dig in. Pulling any more would cause it to tear; Dib knows firsthand how sharp Zim's claws are. They're his last defense and first offense when he is truly scared or pushed too far. He really is just a little feral lizard-bug-thing. In Dib's house. In Dib's bed. Clutching Dib's stuffie. Surrounded by the best paranormal investigating equipment one could build from scavenging around in one's scientist father's basement. Dib has access to plenty of money, but they don't sell chupacabra tranquilizers or Bigfeet tasers online. Not ones that actually work, anyway. If you want something hunted down right, you have to build the equipment yourself.
Dib makes a note to lock up literally everything Zim could possibly weaponize the second the grotesque bug seems remotely stable. It occurs to him that it would be simpler to just let Zim melt away into a little pile of stupid bug goop — but then Dib would lose the best proof of paranormal science any human has ever gotten their hands on, a REAL, (barely) LIVE ALIEN. He lets his imagination run wild through fields of accolades and parental approval and cheers from his FINALLY Properly Grateful fellow, lesser man. Maybe Gaz will even let him live long enough to see some of the awards.
A weak whine jolts him out of planning the future of the Swollen Eyeball (after he is put in charge and especially after he tends to the matter of him tragically not having a portable paranormal investigation base capable of capturing and dissecting whatever he pleases). Zim is, as always, annoying and inconvenient. Doesn't he know Dib has plans to make? Dib is certain he does, that even while half conscious and dying, Zim is determined to be as much of a nuisance as possible.
Dib briefly wishes for a more noble enemy, something capable of epic battles and graceful defeats rather than murderous, childish pranks and tantrums. It's humiliating to have nearly died from giant water balloons, thumbtacks covered in foreign DNA, paper airplanes with knife-sharp steel edges, and pillowcases filled with broken glass at the skool lock-in. Dib still has nightmares about that pillow fight and the horror of a, "Pillow of Sharp, Pokey, Worm-Baby Doom," as it was so aptly dubbed by its despicable little creator.
A towel of dull, speedy, worm-baby doom smacks him upside the head. "Can you do ANYTHING by yourself, or do I have to do EVERYTHING AROUND HERE?"
"Gaz, doN'T –"
Gaz smacks his glasses off with the towel, an exceedingly gentle gesture for her when she's this mad. As Dib scrambles blindly around the floor for his glasses (and wonders how the fuck Gaz sees without hers), she stares down at the shivering pile of burnt green skin, bones, and rainwater.
"Did you try to microwave him? It doesn't even look like Zim anymore."
Dib stumbles across his glasses and puts them back on, after barely avoiding smashing them with his hand. Gaz has probably halved the Great Professor Membrane's net worth through glasses replacements alone. He needs to reinforce this pair, or curse them to be forever bound to his face when he's awake, or something; being blind for a few days every other week isn't sustainable. "I didn't do this! He fell and his backpack got smashed up, and you've seen him smoke in the rain before! It's not my fault Zim's an idiot!"
Gaz continues to study Zim. "He fell."
"That's what I just said!"
"On his own."
"Yes! Gaz, please just move, I need to dry him off before he explodes or turns radioactive or something!"
Gaz steps aside. Dib crawls over, yanks the towels out of her hand, and begins to gently pat Zim dry. The first few seconds of patting go fine, Zim just tenses up. Then Dib pats over a particularly bad welt and Zim's eyes fly open. He jerks as if to turn over, but fails, his pupil-less eyes swiveling around rapidly. A deeply unsettling scream tears out of him, filling the room. Dib freezes, gazing down at his helpless nemesis as Zim sucks in a rattling breath and lets out another, quieter scream. It's still every bit as disquieting as the first. The sound a wounded animal makes, the kind you would do anything to stop or better yet, get away from. The kind of sound a creature makes when it needs to be put out of its misery.
Gaz's eyes burrow into Dib's greasy, ghost-loving, alien-fucker skull. "He fell all by himself, huh? You didn't use one of dad's stupid protogadgets to rip his skin off or some shit? Are you COMPLETELY sure, Dib?"
The rattling and screaming continues as Dib hovers over the thing of nightmares that used to be his goddamn classmate. "I didn't –"
"Answer carefully, Dib. I'm going to bury you in a steel box far, far underground if you even THINK about getting me to help you dissect some stupid fucking alien you shot."
"I DIDN'T DO THIS!" Zim's screams quiet into soft, raspy sobs as Dib presents his alibi. "We were just fighting, same as usual –"
Gaz growls and begins looking around for a blunt object. "OF COURSE. You dumb fucking–"
"GAZ, PLEASE JUST LISTEN! We were just SPARRING a tiny bit, not even really fighting, it started raining and Zim climbed the house because he locked himself out of the security system because he's an IDIOT –"
An irritated grunt from Gaz sets Dib back on topic. "And he slipped and got his backpack thing impaled on one of his gnomes! I think it must have been some kind of life-support system!"
"And the gnome just HAPPENED to be there?"
"NO, GAZ, he used it to climb up the-it doesn't matter!" Dib apprehensively pats Zim's soaked skin with the towel, setting off the wounded alien's agonizing wails again. "He's dying, and I'm being gracious and a good sport by saving his ass from dissolving. You're WELCOME, by the way." He spits the extremely gracious statement of mercy at his patient/captive, and is met with cries of pain in return. Little ingrate. "I deserve a fucking ACK GAZ NO –"
Dib is thrown unceremoniously across the room by a punch to the face. He turns to see his little sister shaking with what seems to be at least a little more rage than usual. "You. Stupid. Bitch. You almost KILL someone, and you drag their corpse back to MY HOUSE –"
"Hey, I live here too –"
"SHUT IT. And you make me clean up YOUR MESS and take care of the loud, freakish things YOU ORPHANED and you expect this to just be OKAY?"
Dib sits in bloody, stunned silence. Gaz turns away from her disgraceful excuse for a family member, and wraps Zim up in a towel. Screams of pain ensue, Dib doesn't dare interrupt.
Gaz walks out of the room, returning a few seconds later with a puffy blanket. Dib's old comforter, covered in sloppily ironed-on ghost patches and scribbled on with notes in permanent marker that a younger Dib had determined couldn't wait until morning.
"Hey, that's my –"
Gaz stops. Stands still, staring through the wall in front of her. Doesn't even turn her head.
Dib's voice falters and trails off.
Gaz waits a few seconds, to really drive the point home, then takes a pointed final step toward the bed. She studies Zim's twig-thin body, racked with shivers, moaning as the shaking agitates the burns, unable to comfort itself even the tiniest bit, to ease the pain or cold. Her idiot brother did this. He was likely fully aware of his actions, and he still had the nerve to regret it and make it her problem. Time isn't a flat circle, it's a fucking tetherball.
Gaz gingerly lays the blanket over Zim, as slowly as she can to try to not pull at the burns. Zim still howls in pain. Gaz winces, almost imperceptibly, even to her. She rationalizes that it's worth the momentary pain; at least he'll be warm now. At least someone is trying to help him, without poorly hidden ulterior motives of vivisecting him for no goddamn reason other than daddy issues.
God, she misses videogames so much already. Her fingers twitch, missing the clicking hum of buttons and repetitive sound effects. She'll figure out how to exact vengeance later. She'll get back to playing "Piggy's Revenge 3: Vampire Piggy Hunter But the Piggies Are Hunting The Vampire Hunters"later. Now she has to play doctor and babysitter for an entire goddamn household of gross, subhuman mistakes.
Gaz stalks out of Dib's bedroom, barely registering the mumbled rationalizations and pained whines she's leaving behind her. She tries to flick the light on in the bathroom, it doesn't work. The storm knocked out the power. Of course. She stares in disbelief at the ceiling, then pulls her phone out, turning on the flashlight to help her see as she digs around under the sink, looking for anything resembling medical supplies. She doesn't have much time. At some point, someone at skool had told her about different types of burns and what not to do with each of them. She has no idea what you were supposed TO do, but you are definitely not supposed to just put fabric on burns. The comforter had been necessary, but she needs to make sure it doesn't get stuck to Zim's bare flesh. Or that he doesn't bleed out. Maybe you only need to avoid fabric while the burning is happening, and maybe it's only to be avoided when you are treating or causing or inflicting a heat burn, rather than a chemical one.
Or maybe none of that matters because Gaz is caring for a fucking alien, and all that matters is that she keeps most of Zim's organs and fluids inside his body, where they belong.
The sink is well-stocked with dust, but there are no bandages to be found, even though Gaz knows Dib uses them constantly to patch himself up after his pointless scraps with Zim.
"DIB!"
Dib starts at the sound of his name as his little sister thunders back down the hall toward him. "Yeah?"
"THE BANDAGES. WHERE ARE THEY."
Gaz stands in his bedroom doorway, staring him down. She sees him holding a roll of gauze and doesn't give him a chance to respond, crossing the room and tearing it out of his hands and off his blood-soaked face. "Find more. Now."
Dib nods, dripping blood from his nose. Gross. Gaz walks over to Zim, pulls off the comforter and starts wrapping him in bandages. Her hands come away sticky, stained neon-pink. Zim's alien blood is thicker than a human's; Gaz figures the only reason he hasn't bled out completely is because his weird-ass slime blood doesn't flow as quickly.
Dib opens a drawer in his dresser and rummages through a plethora of medical supplies. "Do we need anything else? Disinfectant?" He hates transferring authority to somebody else in what should be his Greatest Hour, his triumph over Zim, but survival comes first.
"No. It might set him on fire. Get bandages."
Dib scoops up an armful of bandage rolls, carries them over, and dumps them on the bed beside Zim. Only a few fall on him but, drama queen that he is, he just has to whimper pitifully.
Gaz glares daggers into Dib. "Careful. I'm not doing all this work just for you to murder him again."
Dib mumbles an apology, reaches to help. Gaz slaps his hand away. "I SAID, DON'T mess this up. Go downstairs and keep those things from destroying the house."
Staring down at his bed, it finally clicks with Dib that his sheets were not pink this morning. "Is that... blood?"
"Go NOW."
Dib backs away, leaving Gaz to her amateur doctoring, off to amateur robot babysit. Feeling every emotion at once.