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Glass Wings

Chapter Eight-Lost

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We've all been lost for most of this life, Everywhere we turn more hatred surrounds us, And I know that most of us just ain't right, Following the wrong steps, being led by pride- Lost (Avenged Sevenfold)

It had been nearly a year since Dib had last seen his home planet. He had been hauled away, kicking and screaming, from the only world he had ever known as it crumbled around him. Fire had raged along the streets of his town, debris and dust billowing out from buildings as they collapsed. Whatever could be knocked down, destroyed, or run through had been wiped away in a wave of Irken invasion. His last view of the Earth as he was pulled into the Massive was that of a world being washed away.

And now...

"I-it looks..." He could barely get a word past his dry lips, eyes wide behind his cracked and dirtied glasses. "It looks so...so barren..."

Beside him, Tak and Ele respectfully kept their quiet, Ele with a melancholy expression on her face and Tak with a hard, searching gaze. They both knew all too well the destruction their kind could cause, and could do nothing to alleviate the human's state of mind. This was just something that happened, something even they had been ordered to do.

An Irken's life had only one meaning. Destroy and conquer.

Dib pressed a pale, shaking hand to the glass of Tak's ship, his eyes drinking in what had once been his world, his home. From space, it looked as if someone had dropped a shining blue marble into a sludge pile. The billowing white clouds he knew drifted along the Earth's surface were nothing but noxious looking plumes of black smoke, a hazy blanket wrapped around a mud-colored globe. It looked rotten.

"What have they done with it?" he whispered, feeling a building wetness brimming in his eyes. He hastily blinked as he turned his gaze from the horrid sight to stare at Tak and Ele, waiting for an answer.

Tak took a deep breath, purple eyes narrowing as she took a seat at the control panel, claws brushing over the keypad in front of her.

"I'm not sure," she began, eyes fixed on the screen. "As far as I know, the Earth had not been turned into anything. Not a weapons storage, nor a prison. Not a food court-"

"Or a bus stop?" Dib joked weakly, a smile trying to work its way onto his face but failing miserably. Tak stared at him strangely for a moment, before shrugging off the odd comment.

"No," she agreed, glancing at Ele who had the same look of confusion on her face. "Not one of those either. As far as I can tell, they have abandoned it. My sensors pick up no Irken ships nearby; if they were using the Earth as anything, even something as insignificant as a garbage dump, there would be someone there to keep an eye on it."

Dib nodded mutely, feeling his stomach clench so painfully it was difficult to keep from crying out.

'Abandoned.'

The word kept repeating itself in his mind. The Earth had been abandoned. After everything...the invasion, the destruction, the entire bloody ordeal, they had not even bothered...to use it. It would have been no better, Dib knew, if they were using it, but to think that after everything, the Earth was reduced to nothing more than a spinning land mine. It was...meaningless.

With teeth scraping, Dib pressed his hands to his head, fingers digging into his hair. 'They only wanted to destroy it,' he thought, anger boiling beneath his skin. 'They never wanted it for gain, they just wanted it GONE.' Because of one selfish race, one selfish desire, the Earth that had once been so beautiful had been been razed and turned into filth.

"Why are we here?" he ground out, eyes clenched shut. He didn't want to see it, didn't want to spend one minute longer in the presence of this doppelganger, this fake and broken Earth.

Tak's fingers paused on the keypad, one eye following the human's jerky motions. As an invader, she shouldn't be able to empathize with him over this. This had been the job she had trained for, diligently and without fail, for years. If not for Zim's interference, Tak had no doubt that she would have probably been one of those Irkens sent to invade Dib's planet a year ago. And, truly...

If things had not veered so off course as they had, if she had taken that test and become an invader...she probably would have enjoyed it.

She would have conquered the Earth in the name of her Tallests with no objections whatsoever, and it was that thought that truly brought her discomfort.

The Tallests were no more than an eyesore to her now. Abandonment had hardened her against their empty words, their false promises. Lost in exile on a garbage planet with nothing but her own thoughts to keep her company had finally ground into her head the fact that the Tallests were not leaders. She would answer to Red and Purple no longer.

"We're going down there to find Zim's Pak," she said, her voice cutting through the silence that had accumulated between them.

Dib turned to her, surprised. At least his breakdown seemed to be over. She needed him alert and cool-headed. At a time like this, they couldn't afford to lose focus.

"Could it even still be down there?" he asked, eyes searching the Earth's surface as if he could actually spot it through the smog.

Tak nodded, standing and motioning for Ele. "According to my scanners, yes. It's signal is weak, but it's there. And I know where it is, at any rate. The Tallests never did take it with them." She could remember that clearly enough, had heard Red toss the Pak across the floor, heard it skittering to a stop among the ruins of Zim's labs.

"And how will that help us?" Dib questioned, blinking in confusion as Ele handed him a bundle of what looked to be clothes.

"Put them on," Tak ordered, already slipping her own suit over her head. "The oxygen down there is nothing short of poison to you at the moment. This suit will allow you to breathe."

Dib did as he was told, in no mood or place to argue, listening to Tak as she continued.

"As for your question," she continued, "if I can acquire Zim's Pak, I can repair it, recover the memories, the personality encoded within it. In other words, Dib-human..." She waved a claw at him.

"You can get the old Zim back?" His voice came out soft, disbelieving. It all seemed too easy.

"It's not a simple as that, human," Tak said, instantly crushing the spark of hope that had arisen in his breast. "Not only will it take time and effort to repair his Pak, there's still no guarantee that we can reattach it. We'd have to remove the chip that Red installed, and if you think for a moment that we can do that without any problems..."

Dib quit listening. There was only so much bad news he could take in one day.

-

'What...is this?'

Zim stared at the human girl, red eyes huge, vacant, unable to do anything but look. It was as if his entire body was frozen, the girl's weight on top of his chest the only thing registering in his mind.

'What...What is this?'

Her lips were pressed against his hard enough to bruise, her hands on either side of his skull, pressing him to the ground. This was...madness. Lunacy. This girl's, this human's strength was so pitifully obsolete that one shove of his claws would send her reeling off of his form, rid him of her disgusting presence. One push would set him free of her.

Why couldn't he force his hands to move?

'I don't...understand this...'

His brain felt muddled, like he was swimming through smog, unable to see, unable to think. Something felt so insanely off about this entire situation, something was nagging at him, tingling, tempting, at the back of his mind.

'Get off! Get off of me! Get away!'

He wanted this feeling gone! He wanted this girl writhing in pain at his feet for her insolence, punished for this repulsive act of defiance.

For what else could it be? In Zim's mind, there was no other answer. To do such a thing, such a stupid, foolish act, degrading him-Him! The Almighty Tallest Zim!- was no more than a weakening human's last act of desperation.

And it enraged him.

His fury seemed to give his frozen limbs the push they needed. With a angry growl he swiped at the human with his claws, feeling with satisfaction the impact of flesh against flesh. Without waiting for her to regain her bearings, he pinned her down to the chamber floor, his spider legs pinning her legs down while his own claws gripped her wrists tight above her head.

"That," he whispered venomously, his breath fanning her violet hair, "was the last mistake you will ever make."

-

Purple stared at the computer screen blankly, his claws reaching into a bag of chips absentmindedly. He munched on his snack slowly, chewing without much thought, his brain focusing on nothing.

It was quiet in main chamber. The only sound issued forth from the handful of Irkens stationed at the control panels, the tapping of their claws as they typed and the occasional shifting as they moved. Purple pushed the slight noise to the back of his mind, eyes lazily trailing to the seat beside his own, which was empty.

'Wonder where Red's gone off to,' he thought, lips set in a frown. He was so bored. 'He's probably patrolling the training rooms again.' Red did this often, overlooking the upbringing of the new Irken smeets, monitoring their training, observing their strengths, picking out the strong from the weak.

Making selections for the next generation of Irken soldiers, the next invaders.

Purple thought the whole experience was dull; he could never bring himself to enjoy watching the newly birthed smeets in combat, raging war against one another with claws and spider legs, each one desperate to come out on top. 'He could've asked me to go, anyway,' he thought sourly, crunching down on a chip harder than necessary.

It seemed lately, that his co-ruler was...changing. Ever since the invasion of Earth a year ago, the red-eyed Irken had become more...

'Vicious.' The word popped into his mind, and Purple could not help but nod solemnly. Yes, vicious was the word. He remembered with no small amount of discomfort the day when he'd followed Red into Zim's labs, the way Red's claws had sliced through Zim's neck like paper, the gush of purple-black blood...

Purple shivered, staring at his own claws, wondering what that must have felt like, the same blood that ran through his own body, Irken blood, soaking his hands. It left a bitter taste in his mouth, the mere thought of such a thing. The fact that it hadn't seemed to bother Red at all only left him feeling even more disturbed.

'He's definitely not the Red I knew before,' he thought, crumpling up the now empty bag of chips and tossing it somewhere over his shoulder. He vaguely heard it collide with one of the typing Irkens, but payed their startled cry no mind. How long had it been, he wondered, since he and Red had lounged in their chambers, since they'd cared about nothing but snacks and planet collecting, making fun of Zim whenever he called, instead of combat, slaves, and manipulating the newest 'Tallest'?

Purple came up with a blank. He couldn't remember. The main focus of their life now seemed to revolve around Zim, around his downfall. It wasn't as though Purple didn't find it amusing. It was hilarious, he admitted with a smirk, how Zim was so blissfully ignorant as to what had happened to him, how they could place people he had known and loved in front of his very eyes and he wouldn't even remember them.

But...

Purple let out a disgruntled sigh. He hated thinking this much. It was really more effort than it was worth. He was tired of thinking about Zim, about Red, about everything.

"I need a vacation," he muttered.

-

In a broken pile of dust and debris, surrounded by pulsing electrical wires, a red light began to glow. Small clinks, the muffled sound of metal hitting metal echoed faintly in the gloom. A high-pitched whine joined the din soon after.

Moments passed. The red glow blinked, faded, as though unsure. Metal scraped, clanged as it hit the floor. Tiny gray hands reached inside, searching, searching, felt the curve of something smooth, something important, important.

Blue. Blue looked at red and understood. Blue closed and hands clutched the red to a tiny metal chest. Metal lips formed a smile.

"Master."

Tbc

Notes: Oh man...-collapses- This chapter haunts me. It took so long to get it together, and I just could not match it with a song. -weeps- But, as every chapter must have its own little theme, I had to find one. Hopefully, 'Lost' by Avenged Sevenfold, reflects what this chapter is all about. Everyone, particularly Dib, Purple, Zim, and Gaz, is lost, all of them trying to figure out just what exactly is going on in the world around them, and ultimately coming up with no answers.

I know most of you are disappointed with the almost nonexistent presence of Zim and Gaz, but as I've said, things are building up. Actually, most of the next chapter focuses entirely on them.

And hey, three guesses as to who that was at the end! I'm actually really surprised that no one has asked about him yet.

On another note, thank you all so much. We're over 100 reviews!! -throws you all virtual cookies-