NOTES: I'm going to warn you right now: the first scene of this chapter is the last of the happy-fluffy-slashtastical you'll see for awhile. Everything kind of goes to hell in this chapter. I'll also warn you that the next chapter will be an interlude between parts. I'm dividing the story into two parts, and this one marks the end of the first.

More alterna-geography: the Slapfish River is the Frasier; Otterburg is Vancouver; the town of Prize is fictional in any 'verse, but it lies just North of a little nowhere-town called Hope B.C. All the spelunking and flying-about action occurs in and over the Coastal Mountains.

Thankyou to everyone who commented, and sorry about the wait. It might be awhile until the next couple chapters come out, because I need to get a handle on some structure stuff for the interlude, and I need to sort out the story arc for Part II.

WARNINGS: Cartoonish but deadly weaponry; amateur spelunking (and no, that's not a euphemism); gratuitous terrain description; rebirth imagery like anvils; character death.

--

Chapter Seven: ELITE SOLDIER DRYLOW

Shoot me with your raygun
Full of holes so the daylight
Can get to what's dark
I remain trapped inside your body
The vice above your head
The hole inside your heart

Armour me with futile aspirations
The knives of many nations
A shovel and some dirt.

Matthew Good Band - Raygun

One morning, almost two months after their night in the Voot cruiser, Dib woke up on the Vortian Smart Bed with a sudden irresistible need to fly the ship again. He crawled out of bed, pulled his pants and shirt on, and nearly made it out of the room before Zim made a sleep-muttery noise behind him, and he turned to watch the Irken roll over and nuzzle the warm spot where Dib had slept. Dib smirked and shook his head. Perhaps as a symptom of half his body rebelling against the act, Zim slept restlessly. He kicked.

Dib walked back to the bed, leaned over Zim and gave the alien a quick kiss. Before he could pull back, Zim hooked his hand behind Dib's neck. Dib relented and gave another, longer kiss. And, just for the hell of it, a third. At that point Zim's hands pulled the back of his shirt up. Dib gave up and sunk down to lie on top of him.

--

An hour later, Dib crawled out of bed, pulled his pants and shirt on, and this time made it all the way out of the room. He told Zim he was going home to change. Instead he slipped into the Spare Stuff room at the other end of the level. Zim had let him build a raygun out of leftover parts and pieces, under the condition that he program it not to fire at Zim's bio-signature. Thanks to the general Irken design aesthetic – everything bright purple and bubbly – the results looked more like a super-soaker than an actual weapon. That suited Dib fine. It meant he could carry it around in public without getting arrested.

He picked up the gun and poked at the largest bubble-part – some kind of miniature energy storage cell, like cold fusion in battery form. Since the whole thing was made of spare parts, he'd found the cell didn't sit snugly in its cradle, so he'd braced it in with some Irken equivalent of caulking – which was, of course, bright green. He ran his finger along the seal and it came away dry. He turned the gun over in his hands: it looked like a toy, but its weight was substantial.

He aimed it at the far wall and pretended to fire. "Pyew! Pyew!"

He wasn't sure where he intended to fly the Voot cruiser, but a raygun would always come in handy. Dib tried shoving it in his hip pocket, then down the back of his pants. The gun, however, was the size of a small cat, and although Dib was thin, his waistband wasn't that loose. Finally he loosened his belt and tucked the gun between the strap and his hip. It stayed well enough. He shrugged and headed upstairs to the Voot cruiser bay.

He'd piloted the cruiser half a dozen times now, the last two with minimal help from Zim. Naturally Zim didn't let him take it out on his own, but it'd be fun to do it at least once without the alien backseat driving the whole time. He poked his head in the bay and scanned it for signs of Gir. Even if the robot was too brainless to alert Zim to Dib's Voot-borrowing, he would probably start screaming about squirrels or tube socks loud enough to wake the alien. That, or he'd demand to come along. Dib snuck across the bay, released the Voot cruiser's cockpit bubble and leapt inside.

Once he was in the pilot's seat he pulled a scrap of paper out of his back pocket. On it, in his writing, was a list of three names, followed by coordinates. He recognized the names from the Swollen Eyeballs' reports on Choconium, but didn't remember writing the note. He did know what to do with them: he tapped the touchscreen, navigated through the menus to the ship's Earth map, and input the three sets of coordinates. All the locations were in a valley in Central Spuzzumland, along the Slapfish River. They were within ten miles of each other.

"One of those," he said aloud, "is our motherload."

Dib started the ship and flew out of the bay.

--

Dib reached the Spuzzumland/Kanadia border in just over an hour. As soon as he crossed the border, thick grey overcast enveloped the ship. His research had told him to expect rain in Spuzzumland, even in the middle of July. He stayed in the clouds until the navigation system said he was over the Upper Slapfish. He brought the ship down.

Rain splattered on the cockpit bubble, but in a slow drizzle, not torrents – which was fortunate, since Dib couldn't find the windshield wipers on the Voot. Below, jagged green mountains lumped and peaked in every direction like mossy, half-crumbled pyramids. Valleys etched between the mountains, rivers like veins running and branching along their centers.

Directly beneath him ran the wide, grey-brow Fishslap. Ahead it narrowed, climbed into the Northern mountains and disappeared around a bend. According to the navigation screen, the three deposit locations fell just South of the bend, between two of the tiny nowhere-towns along the river.

Dib headed for the first location. As he approached he realized it was actually at the edge of one of the nowhere-towns, in a populated (well – in a broad sense of the word) area. He parked the ship in the forest, a ways up the mountain, and walked in to the town, Prize.

At the exact coordinates he did indeed find chocolate. He stood on a gravel road in front of a run-down, old-west-style wooden building, complete with porch, raised sidewalk and heavily seriffed font on the sign: Prize Towne Amazinge Naturale Chocolatese. Inside, a man composed entirely of beard and flannel told Dib about the Olde Rowland Family "Homegrown" Chocolates. "As Old as the Hills and Practically Part of Them." "Practically" being the operative word. The actual chocolates were made in a kitchen behind the store – or used to be, before Prize Towne became a franchise and moved its head office and production plant to Otterburg on the coast.

Dib trudged back to the ship, crossed the first location off the list and headed North to the second.

By the time he reached the coordinates, the rain had petered out and the cloud cover thinned. Sunlight knifed through, farther up the river. The second location was farther up from the valley floor. The report, he recalled, had mentioned a short crevasse leading down to a maze of caves. He circled until he spotted something promising: a clearing in the trees, like a long, scabbed gash in the mountainside. The lower half of the clearing was loose gravel; the upper was a face of rock, split down the middle by a thin crack.

Dib landed the ship on the gravel patch, at the edge of the trees. The rain must not have crossed this far North; as the Voot settled down it kicked up a plume of dust. Dib waited for it to clear. He rummaged around the clutter on the floor of the ship and found the goggles Zim had made him. As soon as he'd gotten to his spare pair of glasses, Dib brought the goggles back to Zim's base. They were more effective than regular glasses, and the extra settings were neat, but he couldn't exactly walk around in public wearing Irken technology.

He'd also asked Zim to add night-vision and high-powered zoom settings, and a setting that detected ectoplasm. He took off his glasses and replaced them with the goggles. He climbed out of the cruiser and crunched up the gravel slope. The rocks were loosely packed and he slid back a half-step for every stride he took. Overhead the overcast had given way to beating afternoon sun, and the dry air around him instantly began to warm. Back in the trees, insects buzzed like radio static.

The crack in the rock was longer than it looked from the air – about the lengths of a city block – but most of it was shallow, only a couple feet down. Near the top it deepened, downward and slightly to the left, and Dib found an opening that his goggles' x-ray setting told him led to a larger underground pocket. He squeezed into the hold feet-first and made it in up to his hips before he realized just how small the hole was. Dib was embarrassingly thin, and he was barely going to fit.

After a good half hour of contorting and inching downward (and nearly suffering flashbacks to his cramped evening in the ball bin), Dib felt the passage widen. He kept wriggling until he had enough room to move his arms, and reached up to set his goggles to night vision. He looked down. The tube of rock he was in continued down maybe ten more feet, then either stopped or levelled out.

It turned out to be the latter. Dib reached the bottom of the tube and backed through the short horizontal passage it led into. He ended up in a high, narrow, but thankfully much less cramped chamber. The walls on either side bulged in places, like pregnant bellies, sometimes so far that the rounded portions nearly met and closed off the corridor. Between the lumps, water dripped down the walls to join a thin, sluggish stream on the floor. Dib inhaled. There was a strange smell down there, apart from the stale air and wet rock. Something smelled… sweet.

He squeezed down the corridor, climbing over the rock-bulges where they came too close together to slip between. The smell grew stronger the farther he crept. The water level on the floor rose until it submerged his boots, sloshing over the tops and filling them up. His pants soaked up past the knees.

"It is in here," he said, voice rough and dampened in the close space. "What else would smell sweet this deep underground?"

Subterrenean beehives?

He scoffed. "That's ridiculous." His foot slipped on the slimy rocks beneath the water, and he steadied himself with a hand to the wall. "You're hoping you find nothing down here."

Why would I hope that?

"Because it will change everything. If there actually is Choconium, distracting Zim won't be enough." He ducked under length of rock stretching across the passage, like a miniature bridge. "You will have to prepare for certain eventualities: Zim may grow bored of your 'distraction' and return to searching for Choconium; the Irkens may have other agents on the planet. Or they may think to send one when it becomes clear that Zim is now less active in Earth conquest and more active in your pants."

Hey!

"I would consider forcing Zim to contact his leaders and once again assure them there is nothing worthwhile on this planet."

Oh, like that's not suspicious.

"True. Perhaps coax him into one of his moronic schemes that will never pan out. Have his harass his leaders with the details. We know how thrilled they will be with that. It may remind them why they don't tend to bother with this planet."

You know, that might work.

The water was halfway up his thighs. His feet slipped and stumbled on the passage floor. He found handholds in the wall and pulled himself along. Ahead, at the edge of the goggles' range of night vision, something fluttered in the dark. Dib froze. The water stopped sloshing around his legs and the passage was silent except for dripping water – and a faint, far-off chittering sound. Just as Dib noticed it, the sound stopped, and whatever was fluttering up ahead faded back into the dark.

He swallowed and rested his hand on the raygun tucked into his belt. Maybe instead of Choconium he'd discovered some horrible subterranean race – mole people, or things with tentacles and billion-year-old eyes. At least he'd brought his camera. He crept forward more cautiously. The water level continued to rise until it reached his beltloops. He held his camera and raygun above his head and wondered if he was going to have to start swimming soon.

The thing in the dark fluttered again, this time closer. He could see it through the goggles' night vision now: a black blob on the surface of the water. It froze for a second, then skidded across the surface toward Dib, slicing a triangle of wake behind it. Dib flattened against the wall of the passage and pointed the raygun at the blob. It skittered past him down the center of the passage. Dib let out a breath and inched along the wall. He must be close by now: the cave smelled like on ice cream shop.

His foot bumped something, and the water's surface exploded around him. Dozens of fluttering black blobs burst out of the water. They were bugs, big-torsoed flies without wings, with spindly legs to patter on the water's surface. The water was past his waist now. It buoyed his t-shirt up, exposing his middle. The bugs bumped against his belly and sides, fist-sized and slimy and soft like overripe avocadoes. He gave into his first instinct and fired the raygun aimlessly into the swarm.

The ray flashed green in the night vision, bright enough to blind him for a second. It didn't disburse the bugs. Instead they grew more frenzied. The water around him boiled. His fingers tightened on the raygun trigger again.

"No!" he shouted. His hand relaxed. "Are you stupid? I mean are you truly, irredeemably stupid? You don't know how stable this place is. If I'm right, most of it is made of chocolate! It's the fucking gingerbread house."

How do I get rid of them?!

"You don't. They're harmless. If they were going to bite or sting you, they would have already. You pissed them off enough."

Dib stayed pressed against the wall and tried to slow his breathing. The bugs calmed with him and soon the roiling water slowed to the occasional burble. Dib didn't dare move, now that he knew the water was full of those things.

"Exactly," he said. "They're in the water. Of course! I should have known there would be something down here feeding on it." Dib didn't want to move but his body went ahead and crouched, submerging him up to his chest. "And water erodes – so if the vein is exposed anywhere it will be—"

He held the camera in his mouth and reached into the water. His hand brushed several bugs on the way down, kicking off another mass frenzy. He ignored it and felt along the bottom of the passage. Down at the water, the waffle-cone smell was stronger, almost overwhelming.

His fingers found a deep crack on the bottom of the passage. Inside the fissure the rock's texture changed: it was smoother, and when he pushed on it, it crumbled like classroom chalk. He pinched a crumbled-off chunk between his finger and brought it up out of the water. Through the night vision goggles it was dark, the same black as the bugs – beyond that, he couldn't determine the colour until he got it up to the surface.

He brought it close to his face, stuck his tongue out and licked it. It was so sweet he thought his teeth would fall out just from tasting it. He cringed; his tongue practically went numb. Yup – definitely something Zim's species would like.

Dib gathered half a dozen chunks of Choconium, each about the size of a quarter. He climbed back up through the cave and squeezed out into the bright hot afternoon, soaking wet and sinkingly aware that everything had changed.

--

Upon arriving at planet Earth, Elite Soldier Drylow realized why the Tallest had initially considered it worthless. For one, it was mostly covered in a hydrogen-oxygen compound. The two-hydro-one-oxium itself was unremarkable, but Drylow's ships scanner said that most of it was inundated with pollutants, making it corrosive to Irken skin. Also, its inhabitants were ugly, even from a distance. Instead of antennae, they had hundreds of thin, apparently useless fibres on top of their round heads. They did not deserve to be as tall as they were.

Drylow orbited the planet and waited for his scanners to detect Choconium. He was in the middle of an action figure dramatic pre-enactment of his Tallest praising him for a successful mission when the ship found a subsurface Snack Ore vein, somewhere along the West edge of a large land-blob. He flew low over the area and traced ever-decreasing circles over the rocky lumps of land, trying to pinpoint where the Choconium was closest to the surface.

He'd narrowed it down to one of the long, winding ditches between the land-crags, when suddenly the deposit moved. At least, a portion of it moved. It breached the planet's surface, stayed on the ground for about twenty feet, then launched into the air. Drylow scratched his head shifted the ship into gear and headed after the fleeing Choconium. As he approached, his sensors picked up something else: the mobile Choconium was wrapped in a shell of Irken technology. A ship came within visual range – another Irken cruiser, Voot class Q (discontinued years ago), heavily modified from the looks of it.

Drylow followed at a steady distance. He sat back in his seat and wrung his hands. Naturally he would never question or disobey an order from his Almighty Tallest, but he was still profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of killing a fellow Irken. Sure, he would wipe out lesser species in the squeeze of a squeedly-spooch, but that was different. Assassinate his own kind? But those were his orders. If he detected Choconium, he was to eliminate Zim, lest his very presence curse the proceeding invasion.

However, because Zim was Irken and not some other filthy species, Drylow would at least allow him the courtesy of a warning. He opened up communications with the Voot. "Food Service Drone Zim. This is Elite Soldier Drylow. I am under orders to remove you from this planet. Land your ship and come willingly, or I will be forced to shoot you down."

For a long moment, no response came. Drylow shook his head and warmed up the ship's guns He locked onto Zim's cruiser – strangely, it wasn't speeding up or trying any evasive moves. It just floated along ahead of him, maintaining a steady speed.

Before he could fire, a transmission came in from Zim's ship. The audio crackled, and a deep voice garbled something in an alien language. A second later the video came in: instead of Zim, one of the ugly Earth-pigs sat in the pilot's seat. He kept chattering in his weird, warbling tongue, and waving his hands around. Drylow's antennae perked – he switched on the translator.

"—need to know you're not just gonna kill me when I land this thing."

Drylow leaned in toward the monitor. "Food Service Drone Zim? Your disguise is – rather impressive, actually."

"What?" The Earth-thing ceased its arm-flailing and tilted its head. "No, I'm not Zim! I stole his ship. I don't even really know how to fly it."

Drylow made a gagging noise. "Revolting Earth animal. I should kill you for daring to touch Irken property."

The Earth-thing went still and stared at the monitor. It leaned back and laced its fingers over its belly. The hand flailing and panicky chatter seemed to have passed. It said, "Why do you need to get rid of Zim? And why did you call him a 'food service drone'?"

Drylow sneered. "I'm not required to answer questions by inferior alien filth. Land the Voot cruiser and remove yourself, or I will shoot you down."

"I have a better idea." The Earth-thing held its fingers up. "Promise you won't kill me, and I'll tell you where Zim is, and how to get past his defences."

Drylow narrowed his eyes and folded his arms on the console. He was having trouble locating the rogue Irken and it would speed up the mission significantly to have whatever security information was stored in Zim's Voot, and apparently in the Earth-thing's head. Plus, he could take the sample of Choconium that the Earth-thing somehow had in its possession. The sooner he completed the mission, the sooner his Tallest ordered a 98 lazer cannon volley in his honour and declared Universal Elite Soldier Drylow Day.

"Very well," he said to the Earth-thing. They spiralled down and landed on the side of one of the rock-lumps, amid the tall spiky vegetation. Although their side of the planet was facing the sun, down at ground level it was as dark as an eclipse. The low atmosphere clouds blocking the sun rumbled with discharging electricity.

Drylow collected his gun and a sample canister, clipped both to his belt and climbed out of his Spittle Runner. The atmosphere outside was clammy; a sour smell assaulted the olfactory sensors on his antennae. The ground gave a little under his feet. Upon closer inspection he found it was covered with a deep pillowy layer of loose plant matter. The planet's inhabitants hadn't even the sense to strip its surface and build something useful on it. What a waste.

The Earth-thing strode over from the Voot cruiser. What the communication monitor hadn't told Drylow was how tall the creature was. It was a full segment taller than Red or Purple, may the Tallest forgive him for observing. A bent stalk of head-fibres stuck out the top of its skull, adding nearly a quarter-segment to its height. It was – it was gratuitous! No creature so inferior to Irkens should be so tall! Looking up at it made Drylow light-headed.

The Earth-thing crossed its arms. "What did you say your name was?"

"Elite Soldier Drylow, Class A4 Special Operations."

"You called Zim a 'food service drone.' I thought he was an Invader."

Drylow threw his head back and cackled. "Zim? An Invader? The only reason that moron isn't in prison is because it costs the Empire less to leave him exiled here."

The Earth-thing scratched its chin. "I guess I'm not really surprised." It squatted so its face was level with Drylow's. "You want to get Zim out of the way, right? Well so do I."

Drylow rolled his shoulders. The creature's tallness was having a strange effect on him. His squeedly-spooch was working double-time and he felt an inexplicable urge to listen to the thing's words. "And you suggest what? An alliance? I'll complete the mission with or without your help."

"All you have to do is not kill me," said the thing. "That's all, okay? And I'll make your job way easier."

Drylow shook his head, trying to clear it out. "Very well. But you'll hand over the Choconium in your possession."

The creature's head jerked back. "How do you know I have that?"

Drylow flapped his hand. "Don't bother trying to comprehend our superior ways with your tiny brain."

The Earth-thing chuckled. "Wow. You're all kind of like that, huh?"

"Excuse me?"

It straightened to its full height and cleared its throat. "Nothing. What was your plan to get Zim?"

Drylow opened his mouth to reply. Something dropped onto the top of his head and suddenly there was a sharp pain between his antennae. Another one of the skin-searing drops landed on his arm; a small white wisp curled up off the burning spot. "Twohydro oneoxium! Damn your dirty planet!"

He fled back to his ship, and the Earth-thing followed. Drylow sat in the Spittle Runner's cockpit with the bubble half-closed, shielding him and his Tallest memorabilia from the horrible sky-spit. The Earth-thing, apparently immune to the wet, crouched beside the ship and spoke through the gap between hull and cockpit bubble. They devised a plan to get rid of Zim.

--

After almost an hour of plotting with the "Elite Soldier Irken," Dib delivered the Choconium samples to Drylow's ship, then returned to his own. He climbed into the cockpit and settled into the pilot's seat – and came face-to-face with Zim's unamused scowl on the communication monitor.

Zim growled. "Dib-worm! You took the Voot cruiser?"

Dib tried his best to look clueless and sheepish. "Calm down, okay? I just wanted to take it out for a spin."

"Without Zim?" The alien shook his fist at the screen.

"You're a backseat driver, Zim. It's annoying." He propped his chin up. Look casual. "Anyway, you fell asleep after we, you know. I didn't want to wake you up."

Zim huffed. "You humans and your horrible sleep." He squinted at something below the screen. "You took it for a spin halfway across the planet?"

Dib rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah. About that. I kind of got a little lost."

Zim snorted and put on his smug face. "I don't know how you even maintain your life-systems, with a brain as dumb as yours."

"Hey." Dib blew a raspberry at the alien. "Are you going to make fun of me, or are you going to tell me how to get this thing home?"

Zim talked him through the Voot's navigation system and Earth-map. Dib pretended to blunderingly follow along. Once he had the ship airborne and on course for home, he ended the communication, and reprogrammed the ship to make a detour.

He reached the city and instead of heading for Zim's base he landed on a hill overlooking town – not his and Zim's cliff-edge, but farther down the same hill-range, where the cliffs softened to grassy slopes. A few minutes later, Drylow's ship settled down beside him, and the Irken emerged from the cockpit. Drylow flipped open a panel on the bottom of his ship, pulled out a ridged purple tube, and pulled it over to Zim's Voot. Dib opened the bubble and helped the alien plug the tube into the side of the ship.

Drylow hopped back into his own ship and typed furiously on the console. "Fantastic, yes. Everything's here: logs, base schematics, access codes. If you can get me manual access to his base, I can immobilize it completely."

"Including communications?" Dib found his voice was doing the scratchy-nasally thing again. "Zim can't have any access to the outside world. He may not have many allies, but he's resourceful when he needs to be."

Drylow paused and raised an eyebrow at Dib. "Once I have his base locked down I will have it self-destruct around him. Exactly how much time do you think he will have to call for help?"

Dib's eye twitched. He shrugged. "He doesn't need much time." He waved at Drylow's control panel. "Just make sure you lock down his communications, okay? And no transmitting in to him while you shut him down. Victory monologues are plain amateur."

Drylow sniffed. "Agreed." He finished the data transfer and signalled to Dib to unplug and retract the tube.

"Zim has monitors around the perimeter, but I know a couple blind spots." Dib closed the panel on the bottom of Drylow's ship and got back into his own. "I'll meet you on the road behind his house. Hide or cloak your ship, if you're going to land it close by."

"Don't tell me how to operate, Earth-thing," Drylow snapped. "I am an Elite Soldier; I've trained for this all my life."

"Fine," said Dib. "But don't forget, I'm the expert on Zim."

The two ships lifted off the slope and flew down toward the city. Drylow's shimmered out of sight. Dib couldn't find the cloaking on Zim's Voot, so he stuck to flying high and hoping nobody looked up. If Zim could pilot this thing without being caught, it couldn't be that difficult.

He landed a block down the street from Zim's base, next to a playground and splash pad. With any luck, passersby would mistake it for a piece of playground equipment. Dib grabbed the raygun from the cockpit floor, shut down and locked up the ship, and headed for Zim's house. This time he tucked the gun between his belt and the small of his back.

As planned, he met Drylow on the street behind Zim's house. They crouched behind the fence and peered between the slats; Dib traced out a route to get Drylow to the "dog house" in the backyard without being caught by security. The little lopsided shed was actually another security device, like a periscope poking up from the levels below the yard. There Drylow could plug in and disable the entire base.

"Okay," Dib whispered. "One more thing. Zim has it set up, like honeycomb down there: lots of pockets, not much reinforcement. If you blow it up with us in the yard, we'll go down with it. Can you link it to a remote detonator instead? That way we can put some distance first."

"Of course I can." Drylow fiddle with the device he'd brought to hack into the base. It looked like one of Gaz's handheld game systems. "Right. You had better be right about this blind spot." Drylow's spider legs emerged from his Pak and carried him over the fence into Zim's yard.

Dib kept an eye on Drylow through the fence slats. It would take the Irken a little while to trace Dib's winding path to the dog house. Dib knelt and rubbed his shoulder.

I can't believe I'm actually doing this.

He whispered, "Yes, well. Get used to the idea. No more alien tongue-tennis. What a shame."

Yeah, instead I'm teaming up with another alien, and this one reports directly to their leaders. That's much better.

"You say 'teaming up,' I say 'using'."

And when he tries to report to the mothership that Earth's ripe for invasion?

Dib reached behind his back and tapped the gun tucked into his belt.

Ah.

In the yard, Drylow reached the dog house, pried open a panel on the side and slapped the device onto the exposed electronics. The screen on the device flickered green and the alien tapped the buttons along the bottom and sides. Instantly the satellite dish on top of Zim's house folded and retracted. Riveted metal sheets slid down over all the windows and the peaked roof collapsed into a flat, reinforced metal cap. More whirring sounds came from inside the house, then from underneath the yard, soon fading down toward the lower levels of the base.

Soon Dib couldn't hear the sliding metal and down-winding notes of electronics shutting off, but he could picture what was going on down below. The house computer would report the malfunction in the upper levels. Zim would have about two minutes to scream at the computer for reports and explanations before the shutdown reached him and the computer voice when silent, the interface stopped responding, the lights went out. Zim was left to stumble around in the dark, crawl around in the tubes and passages of his own base, but blocked from the outside by layers of impenetrable Irken alloy. And he would have no idea why.

Drylow's program, he had assured Dib, would scramble and encrypt Zim's base's systems so thoroughly that he would not be able to access them in a thousand years, much less the five or ten minutes he would have before the base collapsed on him. The device's screen flashed from green to yellow, then softened to black. Drylow detached it from the dog house and strutted back across the lawn to Dib. No need to sneak now. Zim couldn't see a thing. He couldn't do a thing to them. He could sit in the dark and rave.

Dib stood up and waved Drylow past. "Head back to your ship. That'll be far enough away from here Then you can finish it."

Drylow nodded at him on his way past, like a man tipping his hat. He waited until Drylow was past him, as if he intended to follow the Irken. Maybe they would press the detonator button down by Drylow's ship, then shake hands and congratulate each other on an assassination well done.

Dib pulled the raygun out from behind his back and shot Drylow four times: in the head, shoulder, and twice in the Pak. The Irken didn't scream, just grunted and sprawled on the pavement in a puddle of black internal fluid. A second after he stopped twitching, his Pak exploded, setting the corpse on fire.

"Huh," said Dib. "Must have had a self-destruct."

I killed him.

"Yes." He tucked the gun back into his belt. "I killed him. I protected the Earth from invasion. And I let your idiotic alien fucktoy live."

He's locked up in there.

Dib put his hands in his pockets and paced away from the burning body. "It could be worse. I could have let the other Irken finish it. Besides, you knew it would come to this." He paused and dipped his head. "You intended it to come to this."

Yeah… yeah, I did. I guess I did.

He resumed walking. "Of course." He returned to Zim's Voot cruiser and flew it back to the Membrane house. He stashed it in the garage where Tak's ship had parked before that horrible incident with the lasagne. Earth was safe for another day.

--

Johnny C. sat on the stairs between two of the house's lower levels, head in his hands. The Burger Boy sat beside him, balanced precariously on the edge of the step.

"That's it?" said Johnny. "That's what I haven't been remembering? That I was a teenage sexual deviant?"

"You also killed that alien." Burger Boy's voice seemed to ooze out of him.

Johnny backhanded the Burger Boy off the step. "Who cares?! I kill people all the time, human people! In fact, that guy upstairs on the head-twisty machine should be dead by now."

Burger Boy rolled across the floor and settled on his side, his shiny face toward Johnny. "But we're not done! Oh no. There are even more fun things for you to remember."

The doorbell shrieked and whimpered.

Burger Boy tittered. "There he is now! Go bring him in. Fulfill the needs you have been ignoring."

Johnny sat back down on the stairs. "That part of it doesn't make sense. I remember doing those things, but I don't remember the wanting. In fact all I feel is nausea. And hate."

The doorbell screamed again. Something pounded up above.

"How times change," said Burger Boy. "You used to be the aware one."

Johnny grabbed a knife off the floor and threw it at the Burger Boy. It stuck in the floor, inches away from his ceramic gut. "Fuck your riddles! Tell me what that means."

The Boy cackled. Somewhere above them, wood splintered and crashed, and something skittered like a giant crab, heavy enough to creak the floorboards. It crashed through another door and clattered down stairwells, down through the levels between Johnny and the surface. Burger Boy kept laughing. The skittering thing thumped on the level above him and pounded across the floor. Johnny felt a tickle around the back of his chest cavity, like something trying to reach out from his ribs, and realized it was his body trying, and failing, to feel fear.

--

Dib never knew for sure how Drylow did it: maybe he sent a message to his leaders on the way form Spuzzumland to the city, or maybe when he self-destructed his ship instantly auto-piloted for home. Either way, exactly one year after Dib locked Zim in his base and shot down Elite Soldier Drylow, the Irken Armada appeared in the skies.

So much for having saved the world.