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Mirror--Ch. 9

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Chapter 9: Self-Destruction
**

"Who are you?" Gaz said. Through the darkness she could only see the dim outlines of the newcomers.

One began, "We are--"

The room brightened with glaring light and the speaker stopped mid-sentence. The two figures could be seen clearly now, and Gaz stared. They were the tallest Irkens she had ever seen. She hadn't really known that Irkens could get much taller than Tak. But these two were at least the same height as her dad. They both wore long white tunics, like the other Irkens Gaz had seen around the ship. As far as she could tell, they were almost completely identical except for the color of their eyes--one had red, the other had purple.

The one with purple eyes glared at the one with red eyes. "Why did you turn on the light? We are trying to be secretive!"

"Talking to people in the dark makes me uncomfortable," the red one said with a shrug. They both had slightly British accents. Just like all the other aliens here.

The purple one grimaced at his comrade's remark--he probably would have rolled his eyes if he had had pupils--and turned back to Gaz. "Who we are is none of your concern," he said, in a somewhat high-pitched voice. "Who are you?"

Gaz crossed her arms.

"Hm. I see. Fair enough," Alternate-Purple said. He and Alternate-Red navigated around the various pieces of machinery and computer consoles cluttering the room, until they stopped a couple of feet from Gaz. "We are going to have to ask you to leave."

Gaz didn't move. "I want to know what's going on here." She nodded to her sleeping brother. "And what you're doing with him."

"We're not at liberty to say." The two Alt.-Tallests moved forward and Gaz backed away to the side. They stopped in front of the machine in which Dib was suspended, blocking Gaz's view of him.

"So what are you, the leaders around here or something?" Gaz asked. Alternate-Tenn had said she was one of the leaders. Maybe she ruled with these guys.

"Leaders?" Alt.-Purple said with what sounded a lot like mock surprise. "Oh, no, that would be the Circle."

"Yes, yes, the Circle! That would be Zim, Skoodge, Tenn, Tak, and Bob!" Alt.-Red said. Alt.-Purple's glare shot daggers at him.

"There's an Irken here named Bob?" Gaz said, her arms still crossed.

Alt.-Red frowned. "What's it to you?"

Gaz decided to change the subject. She eyed her brother, still hovering listlessly in the machine. "I'm not leaving here without Dib."

The Alt.-Tallest looked blank.

"Oh, you mean him?" Alt.-Red asked, gesturing to Dib.

Some sort of smirk passed over Alt.-Purple's face. "I see. That is not in your best interests," he said to Gaz.

"And why not?" Gaz said.

Alt.-Red pointed to a monitoring screen on the side of the machine. "All the levels keeping track of him dropped almost completely earlier," he said. "We don't know what happened."

"That means that the human should be dead. Being in that machine keeps him in stasis, asleep, whatever--it's the only thing keeping him alive." Alt.-Purple clasped his three-clawed hands together.

"If he is taken out of it, he will die in a matter of minutes," Alt.-Red put in, leaning casually on the end of the machine.

Gaz opened one eye and peered at them. Stirrings of anger rose from her core. "Well, is there some sort of cure for that?"

Alt.-Purple's face hardened. He took a step toward Gaz. She took a step back, though she didn't break her gaze away from his.

"Well of course there is a cure," Alt.-Red said. "There is a substance that can cure anything, isn't there! But good luck getting it." He sneered.

"That's quite enough of that," Alt.-Purple told him quietly. Menacingly.

Gaz took a few steps back, glancing around surreptitiously for anything she could use as a weapon. Her hand closed on one of the metal pipes intertwining through the clutter in the room.

"Tell me what the cure is, and get Dib out of there," she commanded.

Alt.-Purple raised an antennae and Gaz guessed it was the equivalent of a human raising an eyebrow. His eyes narrowed. "You've seen too much," he said.

"Say, did you tell anyone you would be here?" Alt.-Red asked. "Just... curious."

Ugh. Lame.

"This human stays with us," Alt.-Purple said. "He won't leave here alive, and neither will you."

Gaz steeled herself and hunched her shoulders. Her death grip on the pipe had bleached her knuckles white. "I've been without my video game for two days," she hissed. "At home, the kitchen's dirty and it's Dib's turn to clean it." Once more she raised her eyes, piercing the gaze of the Alt.-Tallest. "I've been travelling around with Zim and GIR and these people from your horrible dimension, I was captured by my brother's stupid opposite self, my brother DIED saving my LIFE, and now he's HERE, and I walked all the way here with Zim and GIR and my stupid opposite self, and Dib is the only reason I haven't already left this stupid dimension..."

As she talked her voice grew in volume. Unconsciously she noticed that she had torn a section of the pipe away from the machinery sprouting from the floor, and now held it in her hand like a club. The Alt.-Tallests' bulging insectoid eyes were bulging even further.

"...and you're telling me THAT YOU WON'T LET DIB GO AND YOU WON'T GIVE ME THE CURE?"

"How did you--" Alt.-Red spluttered, staring at the pipe Gaz held.

"Do what I say or I'll send you into a NIGHTMARE WORLD... even worse than this one!" Gaz brandished the pipe, which had broken off with incredibly sharp, jagged edges.

"We don't take orders from you," Alt.-Red snarled. Gaz narrowed her eyes at him and, at the edge of her vision, saw Alt.-Red slowly draw some sort of blaster from his pocket. Gaz ducked and rolled behind the nearest computer console. The blast missed her by a millimeter, shattering the machinery she had been standing next to and spraying shrapnel in the air.

"Missed!" Alt.-Purple cursed. He leveled the blaster at the console that served as Gaz's hiding place. "Come out, human, There's no one around to help you."

I guess not all alternate dimension Irkens are 'peaceful,' Gaz thought.

Another blast shredded the console, knocking her backwards. She gasped, out in the open for a second, before slithering behind another console. A third blast rocketed past her and nearly took off her leg.

"We'll blow up everything in here if we have to!" Alt.-Red had taken out a blaster as well and joined in the shooting. Why couldn't anyone outside the room hear what was going on? They were only one level below the place where Gaz had met Alt.-Tenn...

"No one comes down to our level," Alt.-Purple said, as if he had read Gaz's thoughts. "We're the lowest of the low."

"Yes, even though we're the tallest of the tall," Alt.-Red growled.

Gaz had to keep moving. There wasn't much she could do against those dumb blaster things. If there was just something she could--Wait. Her eyes caught on a red button on the wall. The button didn't say "self destruct" on it, that would be stupid, stupider than having a self destruct button in the first place... but it was worth a shot. She ducked out of the way of yet another blast, and clenched her fists. She needed to get over there. And if Gaz needed something, she got it.

She crouched, rolled, and vanished around the consoles and the ugly, bulky machinery in the room. The Alt.-Tallest darted their heads around like birds trying to keep up with her. Every once in awhile they fired off another shot. But really, they had no chance of hitting the girl that moved like a phantom.

And then Gaz appeared at the wall, and her hand hovered over the button; the two Alternates pointed their guns at her before they realized what exactly she was doing, and they froze.

"Well?" Gaz prompted. "Are you going to shoot? Or not."

"Don't touch that button!" Alt.-Red cried, throwing his hand out with an unmistakable look of terror on his face. Gaz raised an eyebrow.

Alt.-Purple lowered his weapon, looking sour. "Don't shoot. She'll press that button before anything hits her."

"Why do we have a self destruct button in our room?" Alt.-Red hissed.

"Tactical advantage," Alt.-Purple hissed back. He narrowed his eyes in undisguised dislike at Gaz. "Human. Press that button, and the entire ship blows up. That means we die, you die, and your friend here dies."

Dib, right on cue, mumbled something about werewolves doing the Limbo and shifted a bit without waking up.

Gaz blew a stray strand of hair out of her face. "He's not my friend. He's just my brother."

"That word means nothing to us," Alt.-Purple said, waving it aside. "But I assure you, pressing that button will gain you nothing. We will all die. We will all lose."

Hmmm. Gaz hesitated, then lowered her hand. Out of immediate danger, the eyes of the Alt.-Tallest seemed to brighten. Their antennae lifted infinitesimally. Their grip on their weapons tightened.

"So. What's this cure?" Gaz asked.

Alt.-Purple regarded her coolly. "What makes you think--"

"Well that's it right there!" Alt.-Red gasped. "Munepulleum!"

Gaz's eyes immediately flew to where he was looking. Right in the midst of the wreckage of one of the consoles, there was a little vial with a few dregs of liquid in it. It looked... somewhat familiar.

Before she could blink, Alt.-Purple ran over, crouched, and snatched it from the ground.

"This fell from your pocket. How did it come into your possession?!" he demanded.

"Give me that," Gaz growled.

Alt.-Purple's face twisted into something foul. "You. You are undeniably the most--"

"GIVE."

"--disrespectful, hideous, idiotic,--"

"ME."

"--INSANE human I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. I'm going to--"

"MY."

"--destroy this," he held up the vial, "and then destroy you." The vial sat in his palm. He was going to crush it in his fist.

"BROTHER! Gaz's scream reverberated around the room. She punched the self destruct button, at which Alt.-Red emitted an ear-splitting shriek.

<Thank you for pressing the self destruct button,> a female, computerized voice said. <You have ten minutes before the Massive collapses, leaving no survivors. Please make your way in a calm and orderly fashion to the nearest exit. Have a nice day!> The computer began listing self-destruct procedures.

Gaz gripped her pipe, and leapt at the two Alternates that stood in her way.

--

"Poisoned?" Zim repeated, attempting to make the word sound mocking or sneering or something, but his voice cracked. "That's... that's not... I AM ZIM."

"He seems to be delusional, too," Alternate-Zim whispered. "Is his name really the same as--"

"I'm not delusional! You're delusional!" Zim snapped.

"There is an antidote," Alternate-Bob said to him. "The trouble is... we don't have it."

"Well bring some to me!" Zim cried. He ran over to Alt.-Bob and shook him. "GIVE!"

Alt.-Bob shrugged away from him. "I just said we don't have any! It was used up years ago. I'm... I'm sorry."

"Master's sick?" GIR said. He ran over and grabbed the front of Zim's uniform, sinking to his knees and wailing, "WHY, ZIMMY, WHY??"

"GIR!" Zim staggered backwards.

Alt.-Bob grabbed Zim's shoulders and stood on tiptoe to look up at him. "Look, Zim, if that is your real name, there's no other way to tell you this. Readings indicate what I had initially guessed--someone introduced a deadly toxin into your PAK somehow and it has coated the inside. There is nothing you can do... soon, your PAK will shut down completely."

"My PAK--Zim--shut down?" Zim's squeedily-spooch seemed to shrivel. This was impossible, it was absurd, it... "GIR! Come!" Zim wrenched himself away and motioned for GIR to follow him. "We go back to the base! I'll find a cure there!"

GIR sat on the ground, sniffling with big fat tears rolling from his teal eyes. When he didn't respond Zim grunted and grabbed the robot's good arm, dragging him away.

Alt.-Bob shook his head slowly, eyes downcast.

"How long does he have?" Alt.-Gaz breathed.

The Irken medic twitched his antennae. "A few hours. Not long. He'll... be dead sometime around sunrise."

Alt.-Gaz looked beseechingly at Zim's Alternate. "We have to go with him. Help him," she said.

Alt.-Zim hesitated, then nodded. "Of course."

Alt.-Gaz nodded back, and together they ran after Zim.

"I'll just, eh, stay here, then," Alt.-Bob said lamely. No one answered. He sighed and headed back to the room they had come from, muttering to himself.

--

Victorious.

Gaz stood amidst a room full of piles of wreckage, scraps of metal, burn marks. Her pipe was bent. Her hair was out of place, falling around her head in strands. Her heart was thumping wildly.

And, sprawled on the floor with considerable bumps on their heads, were the two Alt.-Tallest. They'd be out for awhile. Gaz had hit them pretty hard.

There was no time for celebration. The self-destruct countdown was still going. It had been set for ten minutes... That seemed a bit long for a self destruct sequence, but Gaz wasn't complaining. She stepped over the bits of debris, clutching the vial she had wrestled from Alt.-Purple's grasp. She recognized it now. She had picked it up when she was with Zim in the Skool, looking for Dib.

Gaz went up to the machine and looked it over. Dib still hung there, oblivious to all around him. There was no conveniently labelled "off" switch. Too bad. Gaz simply picked up one of the Alt.-Tallests' blasters, aimed it at one end of the machine, and BOOM! That took care of that problem.

With one end of the machine blown to pieces the green lasers flickered. Then they disappeared. Dib fell to the ground with a thump. His eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright, taking a gasping breath like he had come up from a long submerge underwater. Then he groaned and clutched his head.

"What the--Gaz?" he said, looking at her in shock. "Where... what's going..."

"Here, genius. Drink that." Gaz shoved the vial at him. "Otherwise you might die. For real."

"What? But I..." Dib looked stricken. He examined the vial, sniffed its contents, and grimaced at Gaz. She opened her eyes and nodded to goad him on. He sighed, still looking utterly confused, and slowly drank it. A hacking cough wracked his body and he dropped the bottle. Then he saw the Alt.-Tallests lying on the ground and started. "Who are they?"

Gaz watched him impassively. "Never mind. Let's go."

"I... yeah, hold on a minute..." Dib pulled himself to his feet. "I don't understand... why am I... is that a countdown? Where are we? Man, I'm starving."

"Come on!" Gaz grabbed his arm and led him out of the room, not caring about his struggle to keep up after his sudden wake-up from his comatose state. At the moment she didn't much care about anything except getting out of there. As she dragged Dib out of the room she heard the Alt.-Tallest stirring and quickened her pace.

"Gaz, what's going on?" Dib demanded.

<Six minutes until self destruct,> the computer voice announced.

They reached the end of the hall and Gaz shoved Dib into the elevator. She got in herself and jabbed the button for level one, then stood silently, brooding.

Dib looked around, tensing at the continued countdown. "Gaz--"

"Quiet."

Dib fell silent and stared miserably at the floor. Gaz watched him with no expression on her face. She didn't understand how Dib had managed to be here, and apparently he didn't, either. There would be time to figure out what had happened later. In the meantime...

The elevator doors opened on the first floor and Gaz strode out, still gripping Dib by his wrist. Irkens were everywhere, trying to get out of the ship, and the air was filled with the cacophony of hundreds of voices all speaking at once. Something hurtled out of nowhere and crashed into them, sending them both to the ground.

"NYAH!" Dib moaned and pulled himself into a sitting position. His eyes widened when he saw who had careened into them. "Zim?"

Zim barely cast him a glance. He pulled himself back to his feet and pushed past Dib and Gaz and continued running, dragging GIR along with him.

"Hi Dib! Hi Gazzy!" GIR chirped as they passed.

"WAIT!" someone shouted. There were thundering footsteps behind them. Alt.-Zim and Alt.-Gaz ran up, panting.

Gaz let out a breath through her nose. "So I guess Zim has an obnoxious opposite self now?"

Dib stared wildly from Gaz to the two Alternates. "I remember you!" he exclaimed, looking at Alt.-Gaz. "Wait, are we still in that weird parallel dimension??"

"We have to catch up with the other Zim!" Alt.-Gaz said. Alt.-Zim looked a little uncomfortable at the mention of his name.

"He went where everyone else is going," Gaz said. That was, toward the end of the ship where the little group sans Dib had first come in. Gaz turned and went off in that direction. Dib chased after her, and the two Alternates followed.

The elevator that Dib and Gaz had come up on opened, and out stepped the two Alt.-Tallest. They were clutching their heads.

"There they are!" Alt.-Red roared, pointing at Gaz and Dib. Gaz wasn't sure how they had seen them through the crowd of panicked Irkens, but there was no time to think about that now.

"You! Humans!" The Irken they had met earlier, Lit, made her way over to them, looking livid. "I told you not to cause any trouble!"

"There's no time for that! C'MON!" Another Irken grabbed her arm and raced with her back into the crowd.

Someone else bumped into Gaz and she looked around to see that it was Alternate-Tenn. The Irken leader glanced at her. And she shook her head.

"Just as well it should be raining," she muttered.

"Gaz! Come on! We have to go!" Dib cried. Together they joined the crowd of Irkens. Gaz, not knowing exactly where to go from there, watched as Irkens converged at a certain point and vanished.

"That way," she said, and pulled Dib with her. They emerged from the shack, onto a road flooded with Irkens, and ran a good distance away. Gaz turned to look--the ship, which had been invisible, flickered in and out of view.

"Get down!" Dib yelled. He hit the ground and yanked Gaz down with him, letting go of her to cover his head.

The ship disintegrated. There was a deep rumbling that seemed to come up from the Earth, and a tearing, grating sound. Dib actually lifted his head and turned to watch it. Gaz couldn't believe he'd be such an idiot... but she didn't bother trying to stop him.

--

The ship--wherever they had been, Dib had no idea--was collapsing in on itself. It glowed, brighter and brighter, reflecting like firelight on Dib's glasses. It looked kinda cool, actually. Like something out of a sci-fi movie with good special effects. A circular wave of energy spread from the ship, shattering the windows of nearby buildings and cars and blasting dirt over everything in its path. And then the ship crumpled into dust.

Shakily, Dib stood. "Gaz, what was that? How did I get--" He whipped around and stared in all directions. "Where's Zim? Wasn't he..." Dib clutched his head again. He had foggy memories of being in this alternate world, being captured, meeting his alternate self... What the heck had happened?!

Gaz got back to her feet. She took in the blackened area where the Massive had been--the self destruct sequence hadn't even left any rubble.

"Finally. Things are actually happening," she said.
--

A/N: Apparently, in canon Irken society, the Tallest must go through a ritual of cutting off their thumbs to prove they can rule the empire with only two fingers. Because Irken society is different in the alternate dimension and the Alternate-Tallest were never the leaders, they still have their thumbs. They also don't have those floating suits that the canon Tallest have. They have to walk like everyone else.
...Oh, also, I've decided to try to update this every Friday. Let's hope I can keep with that.
I don't know if anyone actually cares about the preview images I've been using but I didn't have time to draw one this time

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