Invaders of the Caribbean

Chapter 16

"You can stay, you know. If you really want to."

"And lose the only friends I've ever had? I've already made my decision."

~!~

The drumbeats were loud and pronounced. The rhythm was a rather simple one, of the 'half note, half note, full triplet' variety that Gaz had grown accustomed to. However, she was neither accustomed to, nor pleased with, the fact that she knew the Irken standing at the noose.

Gaz and her father had gotten into the first fight Gaz remembered them having. And oh, it had been bitter. Gaz remembered screaming, numerous times, that Tenn was innocent, that she hadn't done anything worth the death sentence, that she had helped Gaz and Dib and protected them, kept them alive, fought off Zim (who she'd spoken of with a bit worse than he deserved), and had generally been a good person. Irken. Humanoid. Her father simply countered with "But she's an Irken." Or "But she's broken the law too many times." Simple responses, facts that Gaz couldn't really argue against, but felt were shitty reasons regardless.

And now, she had to stand here and watch her friend be hung.

Dib had been on the agenda, too, but Gaz had asked her father if she was to be hung, too, and her brother (still weird to call him that) was spared. That was just about the only thing going right so far. Well, that, and the fact that she was no longer betrothed to Iggins, the bastard. He was looking righteously less smug, which was a start. Maybe in another life, or another universe, she could be some kind of crazy Chinese lady-warrior and chop his head off*. One could only hope.

Regardless, Gaz wasn't ready to watch Tenn hang until dead, especially since Tenn had let her know that the PAK would keep her alive in terrible, suffocating agony for several days, trying to fix her until the nanomachines just gave up or broke, and only then would she have the several minutes of normal strangulation before death. Gaz had already watched an enemy in agony, and she could guess that seeing a friend experiencing it would be several times worse.

So when Dib sidled over through the crowds towards Gaz with surprising urgency, Gaz was more than ready to listen to whatever plan he'd cooked up; she knew that look on his face, and it meant 'guess what'.

"So what's the plan?"

"What are you talking about? What plan?"

"…You don't have a plan?"

"Nope. I was actually coming over here to confess that I am harboring deep, undying romantic love for you and wish to propose." Dib glanced over at Gaz's horrified face, and delved into rather girly giggling. "Nah, I'm just fucking with you. I can't tell you the whole plan, but when I put it into action, can you cause some kind of distraction?"

Gaz sighed in obvious relief that Dib had been joking, though she was pissed that he'd timed it like that. Oh, well. "How will I know you're putting it into action?"

"Trust me, Gaz, you will know."

"Oh, one of those."

"Yeah."

And with that, Gaz was on her own again, watching Dib disappear into the crowds. She bit her lip and turned her attention back to the man listing Tenn's 'crimes'. It wasn't like she was nervous or anything. Dib wouldn't screw up something this big. Her lip just kind of itched, but itching it with a fingernail would be distracting.

The fact that it felt like someone was kicking her in the stomach had nothing to do with it.

~!~

"You did well. It's the kind of ending anyone would want."

"Well, y'know. It wasn't like she did anything really nefarious or anything. She just wanted her flesh back. I know I would."

"Still. That was decent of you."

"Not really. Anyone would have done the same."

"I didn't. Your brother didn't. You did, because you knew it was the right thing to do, and fuck the people who wouldn't agree. Don't belittle yourself."

"…Woah, where did the shitty pep talk come from?"

"Nowhere. Are you getting in the boat or not?"

~!~

Damn, did this guy just drone on or what?

Dib rolled his eyes as the announcer just went on and on, listing every single crime Tenn had committed, one of which was just 'being an Irken'. Someone was going to have to set that straight someday, because it was ridiculous. He'd heard that, in the past, in the continent of Asia somewhere, Irkens were treated as being equal to the man of the house, even the female ones*. Why they didn't all just flock off to there, Dib would forever be pondering.

"…And for these crimes, we put you to the noose. May God have mercy upon your unclean soul." Right, that was the ending of the speech, and it was time to move.

Dib pressed through the crowds, not bothering to apologize to the people he had to shove out of the way, and got in range. He was aiming for the spot where Tenn's feet should go…

Perfect shot, perfect timing. As the floor disappeared under Tenn's feet, the sword Dib had thrown appeared, and she was able to shakily balance on it. Dib, meanwhile, had already gotten himself onto the platform and was drawing another sword, ready to cut Tenn free.

Gaz blinked once or twice, in the shock of the sudden panic around as the sound of a rope being sliced cut through the air, then remembered what Dib had said to her not minutes before. Distraction, distraction, distraction…oh! A distant memory, of falling off of a cliff, and Gaz began to gasp for breath, dramatically and realistically, before stumbling backwards and collapsing on the stone steps behind her. Both Iggins and Membrane dropped to their knees at her sides.

Huh. That was easier than I thought it would be. I should do this all the time.

Dib, meanwhile, was currently finding out that fighting with Tenn was nothing like fighting with Zim. For one thing, she covered his ass, and would shoot a guy holding a club between the eyes, rather than watch Dib get hit and then laugh (and call him a foolish pig-smelly). She had better aim, she was better equipped, and her self-preservation wasn't so unfortunately high as it might have been. She had the fact that the two of them were working TOGETHER down much better than Zim ever would have.

So why was it harder to fight with her than with him?

Dib struck a gash in a man's chest and punched another in the face, while Tenn kicked a third in the genitals and shot a fourth in the neck. They found themselves back to back, and Dib chanced a momentary look towards Gaz's distraction. It certainly had Membrane and Iggins fooled. Good. Maybe she could keep them off their backs for long enough for him and Tenn to make a clean getaway…

Jabbing a man through the eye, Dib realized that he hadn't said goodbye. There was a lurch in his stomach, and he was fairly certain it didn't have anything to do with his now-gross blade hacking into another body.

~!~

"Hey, loser."

"Oh, hey, Gaz. Um…are you…generally…uh…OK?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean…you…watched someone die."

"So? I've seen a lot of people die. At the hangman's noose, drowning in the bay, blasted between the eyes…it doesn't make any difference. We all have our time, yeah?"

"But…I mean…in your arms. She…um. Yeah. So…are you…you're…"

"…"

"Look, just forget it. I didn't mean to…I'm sorry."

"…Has Tenn told you yet?"

"Eh? Told me what?"

"Nevermind. C'mon, loser, we're going."

"Hey, get back here! Tell me WHAT?"

~!~

"Give up! You're surrounded!"

Dib stumbled back and hit Tenn, who apparently had been doing something similar, and there was the sinking realization that, whoever had shouted, they had been very right. Everywhere Dib looked, he saw some kind of gun pointed towards his face. He bit his lip and glanced back towards Gaz, who had gotten to her feet and was hurrying towards the large circle of soldiers, with Membrane and Iggins just puzzled at how she'd recovered so quickly.

Dib had expected Gaz to try and reason with her father, something that so often worked, not to watch her elbow into the circle herself like a mosher from Hell. She stood directly in front of Dib and glared at anyone who looked at her funny.

"Gazlene!" Membrane looked utterly perplexed (Not that you could tell, really, with the coat and goggles and everything). "What ARE you doing? These two are criminals! They just killed at least ten people!"

"So have you!" Gaz pointed an accusing finger at her father, who jerked back in some kind of hurt confusion. "And him!" She pointed at Iggins with her other hand. "The both of you have killed hundreds of people! These two are clean in comparison to you, and it makes me feel sick how long I believed you were a worthwhile person. You lied to me my entire life, dad! About everything."

"I don't know what you're-"

"You know damn well what I'm talking about." Gaz's hand was shaking, along with her voice. Her usually 'calm-smartass' demeanor was cracking with rage. "You know damn well, and you can pretend you don't for as long as you want, but you'll only be pretending to yourself."

"No, Gazlene, I really-"

"I know about the GEHLs!" The simultaneous shock on the face of both her father and her brother made her lower her voice from the near-scream it had reached. "I know, and if you don't want me to explain to everyone here, you'll let these two go."

Membrane stared in that horrified, shocked silence that comes when your only child and family member basically screams "I know I was adopted!" in front of a huge crowd of people. Underneath the goggles, he was checking out the size of the crowds, and betting on the chance that absolutely none of them would understand whatever dumbed-down explanation of the experiment Gaz could offer. The chance was at approximately…less than zero. O-kay. Three options came to mind:

Order the soldiers to shoot and kill the three in the circle.

Let Gazlene explain and hope that his reputation would not be so spoiled that he might still be respected by some of the dumber people.

Let all three of them go, and hope to God his daughter wouldn't get killed or raped or something by pirates on the open sea.

He didn't want to kill his daughter, and he didn't want to be disrespected, so that left…option three. Fuck. His daughter was twenty, she'd probably get hurt, and…

It came to Membrane suddenly that perhaps, if his daughter knew she wasn't a normal human, and that most of the care attended to her was mostly his attempt to keep such a successful experiment going, it made him kind of a crap father. Scratch that, it made him a REALLY crap father. And a crap father should have no right to take care of their child. Which meant he had to take responsibility for her, as probably the last thing he'd ever do for her. Or maybe that wasn't logical. It wasn't scientific, surely, but…

What the hell.

"Lower your weapons!" Membrane swiveled his head back and forth, watching some of the soldiers give him 'is-this-a-trick' faces. "I said, put them down!"

"Actually, you said-"

Membrane turned on the soldier with a frighteningly unfamiliar look of rage on his face, and the young man cowered beneath the steely gaze of an angry scientist. The rest of the soldiers, getting the message, turned their guns to the sky. Membrane turned his gaze back to his daughter.

"I have been a terrible father. Go. Do whatever you have to do." He turned, as if to leave, then turned back. "If ever you feel the call of real science boring down on you, feel free to come back." And then he left, pushing through the crowds, fighting away questions and curious glances, and leaving a very confused and feeling-wrong-footed daughter pointing at open air.

Dib turned to face Gaz.

Gaz turned to face Dib.

There was a silence between them, as if they were both searching for where to start, and Tenn just sighed and shook her head. They wouldn't get anywhere like that. So, with two firm claws, she grabbed them both by the shoulder, manually turned them towards her, and blinked once or twice to bring them back to reality. "So, are we going now?"

"What? Oh. Uh…yeah." Dib glanced around at the large, angry crowd pressing in on three sides. "Um…hooow do we escape?"

Tenn pointed towards a wall behind them, and Gaz was sure she'd seen it somewhere before. "We could always jump, smart ones."

Gaz blinked, then smirked. "Alright. Just a second. HEY, IGGINS!" She waved the commodore over. He looked expectant.

"Gaz, if you've suddenly become interested in me, I could possibly take one kiss."

"Could you take one in the kisser?"

"Wha-" Before Iggins could continue, there was a very irate fist in his face, and by the time his vision had stopped spinning around, all he heard was the distant splash of someone hitting the water below.

It had actually been Dib, who had stuck around to watch Iggins stumble around until it stopped being funny, then had taken the escape route. Gaz and Tenn were left at the wall, peering over the edge. Tenn turned to Gaz.

"You can stay, you know." She motioned towards the city, particularly towards the mansion in which Gaz used to spend her life. "If you really want."

Gaz snorted and gave Tenn a look that clearly stated, 'you're-great-and-all-but-you've-got-no-brain'. "And lose the only friends I've ever had?" She pointed out beyond the cliffs, where, lo and behold, familiar, tattered sails were beginning to emerge. "I've already made my decision."

And then she jumped.

Tenn waited until Gaz had swum ten strokes away from the wall before smiling, shaking her head, and following.

~!~

"You guys took too long."

"Pf. We didn't even have to come, you know. Be grateful."

"Yeah! We put our necks out for you guys!" Purple didn't actually seem interested in the conversation, and was scarfing what Dib hoped to be snacks out of a shiny bag. Occasionally, Red would smack his constant companion upside the head and grab a few of the…orange things before Purple came around again, which Dib had watched happen about nine times while Spleenk helped Gaz and Tenn up.

"Well, now what?"

"Um…" There was a collective lack of ideas around the ship. Finally, Gaz stepped forward.

"I don't know if you all know this, but a certain ex-comrade of ours did something really despicable. So I say we hunt him down, and make him pay."

There was a bit of a dramatic silence before the happy cry of "I don't get it!" came from Shloontapooxis. "Who are we after now?"

"Zim."

Red and Purple looked at each other before something dawned on them. "Hey! He never paid us!"

"Yeah! We went on this whole adventure and worked for him and stuff, and then he just ran off and we didn't get anything!"

There were many similar cries of outrage, though they weren't all the same; there were ones like "He never gave me the Interceptor!"(Tenn), "He abandoned his post in the militia!"(Skoodge), or even "What a despicable creature and a waste of life and time"(Gaz). By the time things had quieted down enough for yells to be heard, the entire crew had decided that Zim had to be taken down, and hard.

"We need a captain," Dib said suddenly. "Or we won't get anywhere."

There was general agreement, and as everyone else argued over who was most qualified to be captain, Gaz wandered towards the bow of the ship. She wasn't really interested in the leadership position, which confused even herself until she thought about it. Really, she'd always sat in the back of the room or the back of the class, hadn't she? She'd never volunteered to do big public things, or anything of the sort, because people didn't like her and she didn't like people. The position of captain was, sure, a cushy position, but to be honest, it required remembering the names of all her crewmates, something she could barely do now. It was…well…she just didn't like people enough to want to be captain.

The argument behind her slowly quieted, then ceased as the captain was chosen – Gaz didn't need to look to know it had been Tenn – and the sound of noise and rushing people came back shortly afterwards. She just listened and watched the world around her, as Dib scrambled across the ship and back, or Red pushed Purple into a mast, or Lard Nar yelled at Spleenk and Shloontapooxis, or even as Tenn yelled loud commands over the whole hubbub. And throughout, she had no idea she was singing.

Twelve years ago, she'd been on the crossing from England with her father, and the first confrontation with Red and Purple had warned her of her own bad luck. Twelve years ago, she'd nicked a piece of gold that she hadn't been right to put back where it belonged. Twelve years ago, if someone had told her she would be hunting down an Irken for killing another Irken, something she would never have been caught dead getting involved with, she would have punched them in the face.

Twelve years ago, she'd been singing.

Some things change over time. Others stay the same for years on end. Time is a fluid, slipping from one place to another, moving all around you but never stopping, even for the smartest man or the tallest Irken. Some things it carries with it, other things are left behind. We forget what is where, and why it isn't here, and even what it is or why it happened or if it happened at all. But everything is in it's place for it's own reason, and the time has come for the resurfacing of a few memories, however small or trivial.

"Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me…"

~!~

INSERT THEME SONG HERE.

Wow. Looks like that's the end of it. End of the rope. The whole doodad. Huh. I had no idea I was actually going to finish it.

Hey, this is Chokopoppo, at the end of the line, here to say thank you to everyone who made it through the whole story! You guys rock! I'm looking at you, ZimsMostLoyalServant and InvaderJohnny!

And y'know, everyone else who read. BUT THOSE TWO REVIEWED EVERY DAMN CHAPTER AND I LOVE THEM SO MUCH FOR IT. So yeah.

Obviously, this chapter was a little delayed, as I planned to finish it and get it up about…three weeks ago. However, when it started getting to be overdue, I realized that, what with it being the last chapter of the story and all, I should build up some suspense (That, and I started in on my first year of high school and I was kinda busy. But you know. It's OK if you get those two confused). So suspense was built, I hope, otherwise the whole thing would be silly and unnecessary. YOU WERE WAITING ON THE EDGES OF YOUR SEATS FOR THIS. ADMIT IT. IT'S ONLY HARDER ON YOURSELF IF YOU DON'T.

So, of course, I'm sitting here and getting a high for finishing my FIRST EVER FANFIC LONGER THAN A ONESHOT go me. I had fun writing it and I hope you had fun reading it. OH YEAH GOT A MOVIE QUOTE IN THERE

Anyway.

Obviously, the finish of this fic is MUCH different than the finish of the movie. Thought I'd throw you off track there. Bet you were all surprised and wondering how the characters would wriggle out of it, and then you felt discomforted and confused with the ending because you so expected a different one. Well, too bad.

And, yeah, I'll probably leave the fic here, since IZ just doesn't have enough characters to accommodate for the other two movies. Instead, I would encourage you to, after reading this a couple times this month and wondering where you went wrong in your reviews that would make me leave the storyline at such a suspenseful point, move along. Possibly to one of the two NEW fics I'll be starting up sometime this month, one of which is another IZ, and one of which is, instead, JtHM, which is lovely because I love it.

*This isn't a self reference to something else I'm starting where did you get that preposterous idea.

Goodbye for now, and I hope to see you all again soon,

~Chokopoppo

~!~

Absolute silence.

The cave now housed no living souls, and thus made no noise, not even the gasping, gargling noise of a creature with it's head underwater desperately trying to get some oxygen, nor even the sound of lots of bits of flesh pulling themselves back together with an inhuman healing ability. The light of day had passed several times, beaming shafts through the ceiling and causing a glinting splendor among all the gold.

But it was not day now. Not a light poured into the silence, save for the faraway, frozen glinting of stars and the pale glow of a waning moon. The quiet was choking to any living soul who dared stride in alone, and the fear of ghosts or vengeful demons kept those who could find it outside anyway. The peace of death, of a crypt, the best kind of last resting place anyone dared want, surrounded by gold and the wonderful, beautiful sound of silence.

And yet, something was missing.

The dark blur, that looked more like a paint smear on the canvas of reality, planned on fixing it. Which was why it was there in the first place.

Taking the common form of a red-eyed cat, Mimi stepped onto the flat surface of Tak's chest and nuzzled its (late) owner's chin. It didn't mind the stench of death that weighed down all around her. That would change soon. It always changed eventually, if it just waited long enough. The PAK made it all better. Just as long as you waited.

And Mimi would wait forever.