Our Purpose

Chapter 2

As Dib crawled through the vents, his mind, despite his anxiety, jumped forward to the future, where Dib was admired and understood, no longer the outcast. A future where no one called him insane, or his head big. He didn't even need to think about the present; he'd memorized the schematics of the house so that he'd know them by heart, and despite never coming through the vents this way, he had no trouble absentmindedly navigating his way down into the depths of Zim's base. 

It didn't matter that he was daydreaming. He'd reached his destination anyway.

Dib peered down through the vent cover, watching the little alien yell at his little robot companion for accidentally breaking the wires inside his computer. How, you might ask? Dib had no idea. There were no signs of damage to anything, so how GIR even managed to break something inside the computer baffled him. 

Dib, now back in the present moment, anxious and very slightly confused, prepared to use the PAK he'd created for the first time since his initial testing and the additional practice he'd done with its functions.

The first thing that Dib did was very carefully and quietly lowering himself out of the vent with his arms, trying incredibly hard not to slip and fall into the massive underground base. The second step was to activate the PAK. He'd wired it, of course, to respond to brain signals just as Zim's had, because otherwise the object would have been useless. 

Luckily, it wasn't useless.

The PAK's large metal claws unfurled from the compartment they stored themselves in, gripping any pipes they could link onto so that, after confidently taking hold of the pipes with the arms, Dib let go, and officially he was out of the vents. 

Now, he was suspended by three titanium claws in the middle of the air, afraid to fall but confident that he wouldn't.

Slowly but surely, the human made his way across the roof of the base, stopping himself right above the alien, who was now staring at the screen of the massive computer blankly. It looked as if he was thinking deeply... Dib assumed he was planning something. 

In fact, he was planning something so diabolical that GIR got bored and ran away screaming.

Dib's anxiety was off the chart. He'd never fallen from this high in the air, relying on tech that he'd hardly tested.

But he knew that now was his chance. GIR was away and Zim wasn't paying attention. 

He decided to trust himself once more. 

This was going to be the plan that brought Zim back home, that proved he was right, and that showed that he wasn't the outcast he'd always been called.

...

He took a deep breath.

...

He let himself drop.

The homemade PAK legs instantly curled to protect Dib, so that when he hit the ground, he was fully protected by the claws and rolled into a standing position atop them, much like Zim. It'd taken him a while during his initial testing, but he managed to perfect his center of gravity so that he wouldn't foolishly fall over during his attack. 

He was standing perfectly on his own now, but Zim was still better at this, of course. He'd been using these legs for however long the Irken has been alive, and there was no way Dib would win in a battle of the PAKs. That's why he chose this approach instead.

And it worked.

The moment Zim turned around, shocked, he was captured by the titanium wire that Dib had implemented into the grappling hook he added into the PAK. He'd trained himself, as well, to manipulate the hook so it would wrap around objects- and Zim- and it wasn't in vain. 

The moment the Irken was captured, a celebratory smile spread across Dib's face. He was ecstatic; he'd done it.

Except now came the even harder part: getting Zim to his house. Dib glanced at the watch he'd put on his wrist specifically for this moment. It was 8:32 pm. There was thirty minutes to get Zim home before his father returned from the lab. 

So, in a slightly hurried manner, he began to haul the Irken, angered, confused, and protesting, to his home with the help of the metallic legs he'd built. He managed to drag the Irken into the elevator, and told the computer, as he'd done so many times before, "computer, take me to the top."

In response, he got a "FINE. DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO," right before the elevator began its ascent.

The moment they came out of the trash can, Dib was moving toward the front door, forcefully dragging Zim with him. At this point, he could no longer rely on the claws protruding from his PAK. The legs slowly slid back into their compartment, and Dib was now on his own, aside from the titanium rope that still wrapped around Zim's torso. (Alternatively, thanks to a certain brain cell: The rope wrapped around zim's torso so now zim's torso is being bound by his torso rope that dib is holding around zim's torso so dib can drag zim by the torso rope around his torso that is now a torso tied by a torso rope.)

The Irken himself was glaring silently at Dib now, knowing that nothing he said would make the other let him free. The rope was constricting his ability to move, sure, but it was also blocking his ability to use his own PAK. 

After a few seconds of silently standing as Dib pondered over how he would get Zim home, he decided that slapping Zim's wig on the top of the alien's head would be enough to convince the world, for now, that he was human.

So he did. Dib put Zim's wig sloppily atop his head, and even though Zim opened his mouth to say something, Dib had already turned and started walking again, pulling the Irken along with him. 

Needless to say, it was a silent walk; one of the two ecstatic and anxious, and the other frustrated and annoyed.

They arrived at Dib's house ten minutes before Professor Membrane would return home. Dib sat the alien down in one of the kitchen chairs, taking his own PAK off of his back and setting it far, far away from Zim's reach. He also removed the Irken's messy wig and tossed it to the opposite end of the table. 

That's when he realized that he'd left his camera in his room.

Dib glanced at the captive alien. "Zim, don't you dare move an inch. I'll be right back, hopefully before Dad gets home!" Receiving a grumble from the other, Dib turned and bolted up to his room, leaving the alien alone in the kitchen... but he wasn't alone for long.

It'd been a minute or two since Dib left when Zim heard the front door open. 

It's funny how things can go so wrong in such a small amount of time. Really. One moment you can be at the peak of your life, and the next, you could be in the pits of hell with seemingly no end in sight. 

Needless to say, Dib's day was about to go very, very wrong.