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shadowofthelamp · 4 years

Text

I cleaned up a swap au writing from... geez, two and a half years ago. I tried to make it a bit more accurate to the one we’re writing now. Zim is about 12/13 here.

Wordcount: 1275

Zim didn't like the new kid.

Which wasn't surprising; Zim didn't like a lot of people. He could probably count even loose friends on one hand. (The one with the scar on the back- the other one had a finger missing from an accident when he was seven.)

However, he didn't like the new kid for a different reason than he didn't like most people.

Most people, they refused to pay attention to his greatness, mocking him as weird and a loner and 'had set them on fire'. Feh. Ridiculous stuff.

Dib, however?

He wouldn't leave Zim alone.

Normally, Zim would bask in the attention, but Dib never gave him a break. He followed him from a distance after skool, he pestered him with constant questions during recess, and he'd actually stolen one of Zim's inventions!

Granted, the invention was a laser pistol and Dib got into trouble for having it about two minutes later, which was undeniably funny, but the point still stood.

Despite all this, Dib still treated him like he was... a pet or something. He'd click his tongue when Zim snarled and would wave off any prying questions. It was like the guy had dropped out of outer space, with his house that had sprung up overnight and his creepy sister that never looked up from her... game? Phone? Whatever it was, Zim wanted to get his hands on it- it looked really advanced. (Dib had something similar, but he was always writing in it with a stylus thing that looked both ten years old and from the future. It was bulky and weird.)

"Hey, Zim? How are you today?" Dib whistled lightly, hands in his pocket and a grin on his face. (Man, his teeth were weird. And Zim thought his cousin Pur needed braces.)

"I'm fine, stink-brain." Zim turned back to rummaging through his backpack.

"Why do you keep calling me that? I don't smell bad."

"It's an insult." Zim rolled his eyes. "Are you going to help me today?"

"With what?"

"Robot hamster." Zim pulled out the little wriggling rodent. "It'll make Mr. Spork flip when it grows to three feet tall. It's going to try and eat his desk."

"That seems like it would be disruptive."

"That's the point. He's afraid of hamsters, you know." The hamster wriggled around and squeaked, probably because Zim was squeezing it kind of hard.

"Well, it seems useless to use your technical prowess for silly pranks."

"Pfft, says you." Zim stood up, brushing off his pants and slinging his pack over his back.

When he looked back when reaching the door, Dib had something metal poking out of his backpack, but when Zim blinked, Dib was just writing in his PDA.

~~~~~~~~

Dib had left his PDA on his desk.

Dib never let that thing out of his sight. It was as much a part of Zim's image of him as his stupid backpack and his even stupider hair.

So Zim stole it.

What else was he supposed to do, give it back? Maybe it had information on why Dib was stalking him- or maybe it was a diary and held blackmail-worthy material.

It had a firewall, but it wasn't Zim-proof, and within half an hour, he was in.

The home screen looked weirdly similar to a regular desktop, except there were weird symbols under the file icons. Foreign letters maybe? Only two were in English- 'Language notes' and 'Study Notes'.

Language notes first, but Zim discarded it almost immediately- it was just some kind of dictionary. Boring.

So, Study Notes it was. Zim scrolled through a few pages of the same weird language as on the home screen before it switched to English.

Day 20. Today Gaz said she had fun chasing a human around for his game device. I still don't get why she finds human games so fascinating- they're not as good as the Arcade on Flagtrep-7, and she knows it. Well, they distract her. Would that be treason, liking that an Invader isn't doing her job? Eh. My Tallest says we can take as long as we like, since this place is newly discovered.

What the hell...? Was Dib some kind of author, writing in a diary like he was an alien or something?

That, or he actually was an alien. Pfft, it would explain a lot.

Day 21. Zim continues to be fascinating. For a member of a species so inferior, he surprises me.

Zim's hands tightened around the device as he read on.

He seems almost irken, due to his lack of parental units and love for destruction. He doesn't appear to like my study of him, but I can't help it- of all the specimens here, he's my favorite. He cares for his cyborg pet, but can't stand most of our classmates. A psychological marvel, intense and angry but with a capacity for boundless enthusiasm. I feel if any human would understand our work, it's him.

Of course, I cannot tell him. Law dictates I'd have to dispose of him then, and he's much more interesting alive.

I wonder if he'd be different from the others I've dissected. He's started mixing chemicals to change his body composition- it's less efficient than a Pak distribution system, but I look forward to seeing if they do anything interesting. I'll have to get samples to compare.

There were more entries, but Zim just thumbed past them, only catching occasional words. Dib seemed to like 'inferior' and 'useful' a lot.

Either he was totally nuts (possible) or this was real, he was an alien, and the only thing stopping Dib from taking him apart was a creepy fascination.

Zim had always wanted an admirer, someone to praise him for being so good at what he did. (Well, one besides Skoodge, anyways.) Dib had come close before, but he had no boundaries at all- Zim had spotted him trying to watch him go to the bathroom once. This? It knotted up his stomach.

He tried to imagine Dib with big bug eyes, hands deep inside a corpse, and it came a little too easily-

"There it is!" Dib's voice shook Zim out of his thoughts. "I've been looking all over for it. You didn't look, did you?" His voice had a tinny undertone, both of fear and anger.

"Who needs fifteen passwords? I couldn't get in." Zim said, and Dib snatched it back

"You sure?"

"Yes, yes, I'm sure," Zim said, even as he scanned Dib up and down. He looked the same as ever- but then, Zim had never really looked. His skin was slightly off, but everyone in their town had some kind of mutation, so he'd simply brushed it off at the time as being born too close to the City Cesspool. He mostly looked normal, but there was a slight shimmer near one of his ears. Zim reached for it, but Dib slapped him away before he even got close.

"What was that for?"

"I saw a big hornet about to sting you."

"Where?" Dib's vision darted around, swatting at the air, and Zim took the chance to slip away.

He needed to find out what was really going on. If Dib was just weird, then he was just weird, Zim already knew that. But if he was an alien? Well, that was another can of worms entirely, one Zim fully intended to dig into with both hands.

He couldn't skip last period for the next few weeks or the tracker under his ribs would start electoshocking him again, but at 3:15, he was going to find out the truth, one way or another.

#iz #iz blogging #aip swap au #shadow writes stuff

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