A/N: The point of this is basically just to take a breather from my OC fic, "Defective", writer's block be damned. Secondly, I needed practice working with the Dibber, though this chapter isn't too abundant in that department. My first chapters usually serve as an explination. Also, I thought I'd take a wee stab at a weird pairing that I subscribed to long ago, that being Zita and Dib. It's a ZADR of a different breed, bitches! We'll see how that turns out. Despite this enormous note…this might be a one-shot. Wish it luck.
If it progresses, this story isn't gonna take itself as seriously as the rest of my other ones. I'd like it to turn out more or less like an actual episode. Chapters will be short.
Disclaimer: I am not Jhonen Vasquez, Nickelodeon, Viacom, or whoever, but consequently, I am a stupid fangirl with too much time on my hands and a sleep deficit. I am the writer!COUGH!obey!COUGH! Ooh…GameStation premiered on MegasXLR, which in addition I don't own either. I sure hope Gaz plays games other than on handhelds, otherwise the first paragraph of this story will be void.
Dibsat at the foot of his bed, fully clothed for the morning and completely unable to sleep, though it was pushing four a.m. He was feeling a lot like Gaz did on days she bought a new video game for GameStation and craved to stay up all night long to play it. Neither of them, however, were inclined to stay up passed midnight. Their esteemed father, Professor Membrane, had upped the already tight security in their house…or rather, he'd simplified it so that it saw even the children, residents of that very house as intruders after the stroke of twelve. This was so that Dib couldn't traipse around town after curfew, fighting aliens or other such foolishness. The professor wasn't ever around long enough to acquire a sense of trust towards his kids.
Yes, he was feeling a lot like Gaz, only he was much less expressive when it came to his feelings of aching anticipation. He wasn't punching walls or bellowing like a dying giraffe or anything. And he didn't want to play video games. This was bigger than that. He had work to do: fate of the world kind of work.
In the deepest nook of his basement out of the reach of the professor was a large vault. Inside it, was a little green man who called himself Zim.
Dib had to laugh at the horrible irony of the situation. Zim went down so easily, and with the most rudiment of tactics. He threw a rock at his ugly green head. A stinking rock. Zim provoked him on the walk home, so he picked up the nearest hunk of course sedimentary earth and chucked it. Just like that—insentient alien. Cold on the asphalt, toupee askew, antennae exposed, unconscious Zim. Dib didn't even expect it. Not one fucking bit.
So he dragged Zim the short distance that remained to his house, Gaz in company, uninterested to share the load.
More irony; a vault proved enough to incarcerate him, after a small dose of sedative was issued. A dose small enough to hold Zim over for an hour. Dib couldn't afford him waking and using his pack tools to assist him in escaping.
By the way, it was fortunate that the sedative even worked. Dib didn't know what effect it would have on an Irken. He didn't have time to research this anyway, as his father would be coming home in an hour for a four o'clock coffee break before rushing back to the labs. He shoved Zim in a vault in the basement, a strip of duct tape over his alien mouth.
The glass cylinder through which the tranquilizer was issued the most technologically advanced element of his strategy. There were no lasers involved, no hydrogen bond-breaking beam, no nanoship, no water balloon catapult or literal meat gun…just a drug whose use originated in Africa thousands of years before. There wasn't even that epic battle he'd anticipated. Amazing.
So many scientific marvels; things his father wouldn't even dream of were brainchildren of Dib's pursuit of the alien. All that time, he'd been trying too hard when he could have just thrown a freaking rock.
Perhaps he didn't throw it earlier because he wanted that adventure, he wanted his epic to be remembered as something that he worked hard at to unfold.
Or maybe he wanted to utilize science to gain the respect of the professor.
Who knew? Not even Dib did.
What he did know was that if he didn't get out of that damn bedroom in a matter of seconds, he was going to sprout a hemorrhoid, or worse; scream and wake up that terrifying sibling of his two doors down.
He didn't wish to do that. He went right along screaming inwardly, but it didn't fulfill the same release.