A/N: I'd advise a tactful retreat if the following do not suit you; death, gore, mindfucks, whiny author's notes, monsters inspired from folklore that have been turned up to eleven, dark themes, gore, potential fwiendships and general shippery between IZ characters, mediocre comedy, and... Was gore mentioned? I think so. I'll say it again, just in case. Yeah. This might become an M-rated fic later. For now, I say disturbed, teens like me can luuuurve this just as much as those with developed sexual function. :P

There'd been no blood, no wounds, and no corpses. No spectators, and no suspects. Not even any punks who'd claimed they'd "been there" for a brief taste of newspaper fame.

Poonchy had just vanished one night, and the only things he'd left behind were his attire, a disturbed snowdrift, and a pile of scattered dust in the city park.

Then Penny had followed.

Then Letty and Francine.

Then Old Kid.

Five missing persons within a complete total of twenty-one that'd been spaced over six years - suddenly happening one after the other in one week. All cases showed the same symptoms, yet no cause had been pegged.

Dib tucked his chin into his scarf when a particularly harsh bout of wind stabbed at his jaw. The witching hour was upon the city, and the moon glistened down upon the pale snow coating it. The terrain's icy shroud was a whole nine inches of powdery crap that loved disassembling from the ground so it could cut through the air and serrate your skin with the breeze's assistance. Wasn't a help for anyone, even in thirst – with the pollution's backing, it all tasted like dish soap.

Lifelessly brushing against that "dish soap" was the parka of an adolescent girl, tangled in a wall of neon-yellow police tape. A couple feet away, strewn listlessly on the ground were two other fashionable parkas, covering that dust in their fabric guts.

The camera clicked in fledgling detective's hands, taking shots of various angles. The police, predictably, had been useless, reserving this as a matter for the experts; for a specialized Swollen Eyeball agent, to be exact.

At least, Dib considered himself specialized. This was his eighth or so official mission, even if it was just simple reconnaissance. After all his cracktastic screw-ups, he was surprised he was still on the agent roster at all, to be honest. Oh well.

The boy frowned at the bits of murk in his pictures, but accepted that this was best lighting he was ever going to achieve and moved on. Carefully, he knelt beside one of the parkas, and scooped some of the dust inside into a small beaker he produced from his pocket for analysing later. One of the perks of having an absentee, world-renowned scientist for a father was that you got all the good investigating toys to work with.

Not that Dib would relate the murder of these kids to a game. He hadn't descended that far into madness yet.

At least, that's what Dib hoped.

Despite his winter attire, Earth's saviour felt a bit of a chill nestling around his bones. From his collection of awesome trench-coats, he'd selected one a bit thicker than normal that buttoned itself up along his left side, with a shorter tail to make walking less constricted. A black-and-blue striped scarf poked out from the coat collar to warm his face, and a complementary set of Swollen Eyeball earmuffs closed around his skull. If it weren't for these two articles of clothing (and his pale skin) he would've camouflaged perfectly with the black, spindly trees freckling the park, and the shadows rolling along under the clouds.

Wasn't much on him to speak of otherwise, spare the not-quite, but-pretty-darn-indestructable-nonetheless-stake-of-some-dead-vampire-slayer-or-another hiding under his coat he'd bought off a hobo for a sandwich, in case fighting occurred. You could never be too prepared against the unknown, after all.

At any rate, the dreary silence soon broke.

"Agent Mothman?" a voice hissed through the wall of black trunks.

Dib flinched and turned, but what he saw wasn't an eldritch abomination, and it was thanks to this fact that he didn't whip his stake at it.

Instead he scowled. And it was only thanks to basic human law that he didn't whip his stake it.

"Why," Dib deadpanned in a tone so flat it gave Bloaty's roadkill a run for its money.

"'Why'? Because…" the stranger gave a big grin, lowering his sunglasses as he exited the pitch shade. This 'stranger' was a lanky fellow in a Matrix-themed trench coat, with short dark hair (currently covered by a strange, puke-green beanie embroidered with dumbass smiling emoji), a squared jaw and an oh-so-punchable curved nose, "I, am Agent Frankenchokey, and I-"

"Bill why are you a Swollen Eyeball Agent," Dib rephrased, rolling his eyes.

"Wait a minute. I know you!" gasped the elder man, "You're that big-headed kid from Career day… Doob!"

"Ugh, that's not- oh, whatever. Let's pretend that didn't happen. Why are you with the Swollen Eyeballs, Bill?"

Bill, in case you, dear viewer, did not recognize him, was the closest thing to suave as an overgrown man-child could get, and the guy lost no points for style on that front. He made sure to use cool terms, and spoke nice, low, and brisk – plus, he carried a nice aesthetic with him that just bordered on trying-to-hard without falling flat. The fraud lost points everywhere else, however, as despite his field as a paranormal investigator, he was about as retarded as balls.

"Agent Frankenchokey to you!" Bill dramatically pointed, "I am on board with you closed-minded nutjobs, because…" the man slowly slicked down his coat for cool, dramatic effect, "…See, I'm on the lam. Coco-Fang – Coco-Fang set me up for murder, man. Eyeballs offered me sanctuary in exchange for research, and I need friends right now. I'm closer to catching him than ever, I can feel it in my bones!" He posed, shaking his fist to the lifeless skies, full of drama.

"Are you trying to say that you were assigned to me for this case, Bill?" Dib asked, praying it wasn't true and knowing full well how vain a wish it was, "And are you already jumping to the conclusion that this was all done by a Cereal mascot?"

"Yes! …Well, no! You were supposed to go solo for this one, but I swear, Count Coco-Fang's written all over this mess of a case! I begged and begged 'til they caved! So now…" Bill rushed over and snatched Dib up to eye-level by his shoulders, much to the twelve year old's obvious discomfort, "You're gonna show me the ropes for how you Eyeball-guys do things!"

"Uh…" Dib glanced over his shoulder to coats, trying to ignore how Bill's eager breath stunk and fogged his glasses. The physical contact felt like squishing, temperate ants on his bones… "You're kinda late then, since this was just supposed to be a recon assignment. I stopped by Poonchy and Old Kid's remains already, took pictures and a bit of their dust, and just now I finished up with the girls. Really, I'm gonna head back home, maybe grab a hot chocolate if Sweet-Sick shop is open, and e-mail what I've got to Darkbootie..."

Bill glared long and hard at Dib's face. "…Oh!" he exclaimed, releasing the boy to plummet into the snow, "Well, I see how it is. You're the kind of kid who just does as he's told, aren't you?! Well," Bill triumphantly turned to the wall of trees, "I ain't moving til' I meet Coco-Fang! That sack of garbage's gonna rue the day he crossed BILL."

Dib coughed up as much of the snow as he could, and spared a glare to the fellow agent's back. He'd started off being done with the screwball, and that sentiment had grown to the point that he didn't know what he was feeling anymore. He got to his knees in the cold blanket.

"Bill, Coco-Fang DOESN'T EXIST!" he shouted, letting his veins go hot with hate, "HE'S A STUPID MASCOT THAT TURNS BLAND FOOD INTO DIABETIC INGREDIENTS! HE'S USUALLY PLAYED BY HOBOS BECAUSE THE COMPANY'S TOO CHEAP TO HIRE ACTUAL ACTORS, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!"

Bill did not hear a word. "You hear me, you pilferer of children's dreams?!" he carried on forward menacingly, "Bill ain't going nowhere."

Depending on how you interpret the following events, this was either hilariously inaccurate, or snicker-worthingly correct.

Because in the shadows, an appendage lunged out and skewered Bill right through his chest.

Dib froze.

Bill, trembling, stuttered out a sound, but the words were clogged with his blood. The monstrous tendril exiting out his back wrenched its pointed end about, gleaming in the moonlight as the body writhed around its form, shaking, and bleeding into the snow a foot below. Slowly, the appendage snaked up in a sort of curve, letting the body slide down into the wet unceremoniously, twisting and reaching for anything to latch onto. Dib swallowed and almost reached out for him, but simply could not get the ice in his nerves to unlatch. He quavered instead, clenched tightly on himself. Liquid red confetti burst from the investigator's lips and a long, despairing gargle rung out into the night, the hole in his ribcage emptying into the white earth.

However, the limb wasn't done. Deliberately, it descended to the gaping hole within the chest cavity. The human shell sloshed and squeaked apart in protest, but these biological clamours did not persuade the limb. A strange light crept out from the curved bones, and after its minute of hovering inside it exited with a glowing sort of wisp in its grasp. A small, weak thing in a ball-like shape that defiantly flickered orange before being slipped back into the shadows of the trees.

Dib could only watch as the man's eyes went milky and dull upon its removal. The once normal skin turned brittle and starting peeling off his bones like shredded paper, a jigsaw coming undone, crusting and sprinkling itself around the body before converting into the powder. The same fate affected every layer of the investigator, disrobing his tissue and his bones and his marrow. His blood lost colour and evaporated at a rapid pace, leaving no evidence that Bill had ever existed beyond the dust spiralling out, and the punctured jacket that lay crumpled in on itself in awkward angles.

Dib almost choked as a silhouette attached to the massive (rapidly normalizing) limb slowly crunched forward from the trees – a familiar character, with a cloaked figure who leered down at the captured orange wisp, like a prize.

"No one likes a line-cutter," tsked the fanged man, pinching the orb(?) with the mostly-now-normal human limb, "Or people who dig into things that don't concern them. You'd think, you would've learned your lesson way back when… Alas…"

It was Coco-Fang, but… But, everything was wrong. Maybe the grotesque amounts of eyeshadow amplified the effect, but his face looked so much like cheap plastic, and his mouth twisted at a strange angle and, and… Coco-Fang's spine started distending as he rose up, dangling the ball – Dib could only assume it was Bill's soul – over his maw before swallowing the damn thing whole.

"Wha… What are you?" Dib breathed, slowly drawing the stake. "Coco-Fang" drooped his eyelids, and sneered at him.

"Heh. Doesn't really mATTER, BRAT," the voice became distorted. Coco-Fang's expression suddenly went dead, and the rest of him distended as a creature seemed to leave out its back, leaving nothing more than a smiley puppet behind. This puppet, too, turned to dust.

"YOU'RE ON THE LIST."

Dib shuddered as the creature grew in height. It was a hovering, liquidy smoke at first, then it began developing a wriggling sort of dark membrane to swathe it, layering itself again and again as it gradually became more solid. The boy could hear bones snapping under, gore(?) slithering and developing inside… The new, and still rising skin mirrored ocean waves as content filled it, and emergent clawed limbs stretched out to slink along the ground. Wind started to scream and bite past the whole area – it sliced along his pores…

Dib didn't wait for it to finish its transformation. He made a bunch of distressed noises, took a quick picture, and finally woke his nerves up to book it right out of there.

There was no way in hell he was gonna be facing THAT.

White breath tore out his lips as he darted through the woods, stabbing at the ground with his quick strides. Blood rushed, wind whipped past him, his scarf tore off his neck and fluttered in the his wake of desperate footprints. He fingered at a pocket and didn't even care if the camera had made it in or not.

The outcast zigzagged through the dead trunks, jumped over a log, and struggled to breathe in general. His lungs burned and struggled for the air serrating past his scrawny body. Drums resounded in his ribs, vibrated the bone. His spit grew thick in the base of his mouth.

In the distance behind him, he could hear something screeching.

He was halfway to the lamplighting littering through streets, when things began breaking. Wooden arms snapped in halves above him – hurtling down like shrapnel. His own arm followed when a massive brute broke through overhead and crashed down not one foot from his side, sending Dib sprawling across the ground from the rupture.

One merry SNAP to start the list of things Dib would need professional help with later.

Pain broke through his skin like a dam. Wincing, he spat out some snow(god it tasted awful) and spared a glance to his radius, which had been fractured just enough to give Zim's logic a run for its money. A piece of bone poked out his skin, as if to say hello, much to Dib's hiss of revilement.

A yelp exploded out his lungs as a deformed hand lunged for him. Now with his nerves safely unfrozen, the outcast threw himself to feet(wincing terribly at the throbbing in his limb) right as the claws impaled his snow-angle's chest. The murk and white winds fell over the screeching behemoth, trying to unlatch its digits from the permafrost. The head held a strangely goat-like silhouette, but once again Dib did not wait to observe it further. He simply whipped the stake with his good arm at its chest and stumbled into a full-sprint once the thing started screaming. Before he knew it, the boy was off again to the lights pouring in from the cracks that spelled out the city paths to his home.

The thing screamed his name.

Convulsions rippled through the earth. He could hear the splatters of matter sloshing into the snow once the hand was freed, and a presence thundering after his spine. Getting closer by the second.

He could hear trees crashing and feel desperate, coppery exhale crawl on his neck and the racing pace of the creature in his feet. Teeth were snapping-

A forked tongue darted at his nape

This awful lurch thronged in his guts, the hot breath overwhelmed his senses… That creature's maw was opening, too.

The road was inbound…!

Instinct shrieked at him to roll once he reached the road, as jaws crunched at the air where his head once was. Membrane's eldest stuck close to the terrain, tucking correctly and coming to his feet with nary a disturbance to his arm(ugh, but he did wince a bit regardless, gods that smarted). The beast struggled to slow its run and redirect its course when there was no child in its path, but Dib had already reached the barren roads of the city and was tracing the streets to his neighbourhood.

Signs flared by of street-shops. Traffic signs, advertisements and billboards. Busted buildings, corner stops. No people out of course, because why would there be anybody to help Dib? Too cold, too lifeless, too many police warnings not to. Dib, given his luck, would probably be considered insane for being out there, especially with the winds as they were now.

The sections of the city meant for housing pedestrians drew near. Several blocks were down – the creature had gone silent, but Dib knew not to take any chances, especially since he only had three to go. A stitch was developing in the Mothman's side, but as usual he chose to ignore it. He'd been through worse with…

Zim.

Huh, Zim's house was getting really close, he realized.

Dib almost slowed his frantic pace as the familiar, narrow walls approached his line of sight. The artificial residence still hung onto the condos shrouding it with its bulky metal tubes, and its windows were brightly lit, insinuating that the local alien threat was probably watching TV at the moment(the holidays were coming up, that meant all kinds of specials on the air. Zim did love tearing those apart…). The same, unchanged field of gnomes stood in the yard, utterly dead and sparking in their places. Considering the puddles, the smoking holes in the fence, burn marks on the teal and the massive tears left in the earth around them, Dib could only assume that Zim had ordered them to do no less than incinerate every snowflake that dared drift into the vicinities. Since the security threats were down and Dib looked messed up enough, maybe Zim would give him sanctuary from the eldritch abomination…?

…

"Nah, Zim's a jerk," Dib chimed aloud, donning a determined(and fairly winded) expression. "Besides, I've got t-"

A car suddenly smashed into his body.

A vacant car, thrown from across the street by a nine-foot monster, smashed at several miles an hour to project him across the asphalt and into the side of his enemy's home as a cowlicked gore-splatter – a 1500 pound, effective yellow pin.

With an annoying alarm.

Dib wheezed, his nerves alight in intense agony as practically everything he could see on him was turning crimson. Wincing from the blare of sound, he tried to rise, but even he knew deep down this was impossible. Glass from a busted headlight brushed against his intestines, digging deep into his guts, sending his throat soaring with thick fluids to wash down his chin. Piercing sensations spotted across the entire world within his ribs, now that their casing had completely shattered. Punctured lungs, impaled arteries, bones broken beyond repair... His vision was slipping about in lucidity, and when his tongue had stretched out in a sad attempt to scream for help, he tasted blood and salt.

He couldn't feel his legs, either.

Yet, despite his cracked and twisting vision(his glasses were barely holding onto his head), he could still fuzzily see across the street.

There was a great, black smudge against the blizzard. Its eyes glowed a dull garnet.

One foot after another, it drew near yet nearer still. The body still seemed to lack proper foundation, shambling against itself with every footstep, but it still towered masterfully, black and wraithlike. Despite the beginnings of death that cuddled Dib's mind, he still took note of the fact one leg's end actually held a decayed, crooked set of human toes, while the other was a big, cloven hoof. A swirling spine extension twirled in the wind behind it, and a set of curled horns sat on its skull.

It raised a finger, and a sole, black tendril rose from the ground. The limb that'd claimed Bill.

It pierced into Dib's chest, much like it had for the former agent.

Oh, the magnitude of the Mothman's scream. How the blood and pain and lack of air forced it to resound inside his own throat and push through his whole frame without any mercy of release. Unlike Bill, though, who's nerves hadn't been crushed, this pain slowly began to drain out with his blood. Dazed and slipping away, the boy could just make out the faintest trails of light crawling from the open wound, gliding against his face and glasses and leaving him so, so cold and numb. It was blue in shade, and the more he saw, the more it felt like he'd been split from his own life, his body. Everything that was "him", sent to pour gently out into a void in distant space. A rapidly stilling ripple on a sleeping world. The brighter the light got, the darker everything else did...

Was that light… His soul, then?

It was quite… Pretty… It looked rough around the edges… Still burning in spite of everything anyway...

Well, at least the sheer magnitude of the impact was enough of a noise to rally Zim from whatever shitty special was on. Dib couldn't quite see the black-clothed digits pinching the door out the corner of his eye, but he could hear their owner's voice, like it was underwater.

"Ugh… DO YOU HAVE NO CAPABILITIES OF COMPREHENSION?! No amount of knocking – regardless of how impressive it is – will rouse Zim enough to join you in this… Jelly-nova witness gathering place!" the alien's voice hissed, "So give up, you pathetic humans! Give up and wallow in your self-inflicted SHAME! Good day!"

Dib heaved, trying to at least sound out Zim's name, only to let out a sad, sad squeak instead.

Surprisingly, it was good enough. Who would've figured that the sound of incurable suffering was sufficient to beckon Zim from his base?

He was in disguise. Over the last year, the parasite hadn't changed much at all. His eyes were suspicious little slits at the moment, looking everywhere but Dib's flattened body, the soul-stealing-goat-monster, and the hysterically wailing car. Instead, he scanned his yard and other such useless tripe like the idiot he was…

"Hey, why's it smell like smoke anyway-" the Invader line of thought ended when he caught the boy's hand weakly reaching out for him. Apparently, if Zim's look of complete revulsion and horror was anything to go by, the outcast wasn't looking too pretty, "…Dib!? WHAT'S- YOU-?!" he sputtered for a bit, trying to make a coherent statement. The horror in big, purple eyes certainly contrasted with that stupid, red Christmas sweater GIR had probably forced on him… "Why are you in a splattered car pancake?! Why're your guts and blood-candies spilled everywhere?! WHAT IS THAT?!"

As if to answer in our dear child's place, the creature glanced to Zim. Distending its neck, it creaked its mean, slim head in the alien's direction and gave him a smile.
A long, long, smile filled with at least several hundreds of white razors. The black vine coiled around a now comatose Dib's soul, and slowly began to draw itself out from the squelching meat…

Evidently, Zim did not like that answer.

The Invader snarled at the creature, reached into his PAK and took out a small panel with a button attached. He slammed this button and in response the roof to his home raised, revealing several lazer cannons aiming right at it.

Off the fireworks went, searing through the corrupted flesh. Plasma blasts, foreign elements, pure compiled radiation, plain old bullets. It let out an almost obligatory roar, but it soon began to fade from existence with pressure. Even in sleep, Dib almost sighed as the thing released his soul, its tail falling apart. The glow from his wound stopped, and the distant, cold feeling felt less unnatural now. It transferred into more of the ungodly agonizing sensation from earlier as his consciousness started flickering. One last encore of his existence, perhaps.

Great.

However. From the black, dissolving cloud that was once the monster's form, the last thing to go was its head. Said head locked its eyes with the alien. It didn't curse, or cry, or do anything of the sort.

Instead, it gave a soft, cruel little smirk, the sort that was like a mixing of honey and gin.

"This doesn't matter. You're on the list," it rasped.

And then it was no more.

Zim drank the words for a moment with suspicion. He then shrugged them off and hopped triumphantly on top of the car pinning his mortal enemy.

"You look AWFUL, Dib," he smirked, before gaining a scowl when he didn't respond beyond feeble attempts at breathing, "Did you have to pick a death-method so NOISY though? I mean, this thing's like… Eew. Listen at it. Listen AT IT AND WEEP, FOR THIS IS NOT ZIM'S LAUGHTER AND INSTEAD THE SAD WAILS OF A PATHETIC EARTH VEHICLE. …Anyway… …YOU HAVE MET YOUR DEATH ON THE DOORSTEP OF ZIM! You!... You… …you…" Zim's little rant suddenly lost momentum, it seemed, and the Irken looked around, like he'd find what he'd wanted to say graphitized in the singed ground around him somehow. "…Okay, you know what? I'm mad at you. Yes, Dib-STINK, Zim is mad at you! You let yourself get killed by something else, despite everything Zim has done?! How DARE YOU! I have half a mind to-"

As expected, Dib didn't really get to form a response to any of Zim's words.

Because his heart decided to completely stop right there.

A/N: Man, that's a lot of death for one chapter.

My inspiration?

…Menstrual cramps. Gonna roll with menstrual cramps. (More like gonna roll to the medicine cabinet, FUCK MY GUUUUUTTTSSSS)

I've wanted to return to the pen for a while now. Had problems with getting motivated… You know how it is, yeah? I feel super rusty, and THIS feels rusty, but that's probably me overestimating my potential and being too critical of what I put down. I might clean this up and edit it piece by piece as time goes by... Yeah. I'm one of those writers. My apologies in advance, heh.

This project's been on my mind for some time, and I wanted it shared. I might make it ZADR at some point down the line, but eh. We'll see if it works to the story's favour. Gotta keep the boys decently in-character, after all, and perhaps it'll just be some prickly ZADF instead. Thinkin' I'll pull a fandom inverse and value the plot over romance. I mean, I've got an outline for where this is gonna go, but I think I'll let some things write themselves, yeah?

Horror and angst with mehopes some nice stuff and laughs inbound. Demons, character destruction… Yeah.

Maybe, if all the stars align, and we all pray, and the great Greek muses come and bless me with all the wellsprings of inspiration on this planet…

…I might write Chapter 2.