Invader Zim ZADR: How did we get here?

Chapter 16: Climatic showdown

And so we have arrived, to witness a new chapter. Dib seems to have his work cut out for him, as he has no idea of what Zim plans to do, though he has made his intentions VERY clear. Will Dib be able to walk away from their confrontation alive? Or is it all some kind of elaborate out-of-season April fool's joke? Well...it's time to find out!

"Out of all the places he could go, it just had to be a junkyard," Dib muttered to himself out of spite, as he looked upon the rusted and decayed sign that hung over the gate, barely visible in the darkness of the night. The slogan of some old and forgotten company had long since rotted away, and only the disgusting shrivels of colored paper remained, still holding on after all those years against the elements. Still, by every measure possible, it was more welcoming than the hell landscape made out of jagged and rust-red metal that stood in piles as high as houses, on the other side of the fence.

Dib wondered for a moment why no one had come to clean out the place yet, but those thoughts were quickly buried under the dreadful realization that he had to go in. And the fact that Zim was in there, and possibly planning to murder him, didn't help either. It was one of many times Dib wished that he could have his sister with him if only to remind him that there are things scarier than spooky abandoned junkyards. But unfortunately, she wasn't with him, so once again, it was something he had to deal with alone. Though it did kinda comfort him that he was only dealing with Zim. The alien was at least a familiar threat, compared to the frightful unknown he had the bad tendency to jump straight into, without considering his own safety.

With that last comforting thought, he took the first steps toward the entrance, the gates conveniently standing open, with the broken lock on the ground. Dib didn't need to think hard to figure out who was behind it. He continued forward, the only light source to guide him being the shining moonlight. But even that was starting to get blocked out by the mountains of scrap.

Still, he found himself not as utterly terrified as he thought he would be. It was a quiet night by all things considered, and there weren't any spooky sounds of metal creaking, or movement in the shadows. It was quiet... too quiet, especially by Zim's standards.

It was then that Dib was struck by a concerning thought. That perhaps the whole situation wasn't just solely the work of Zim. That maybe someone, or something, was lending a hand to the invader. Or even had used the invader to get at Dib. For whatever reason. But those thoughts were quickly discouraged. Dib knew that Zim wasn't going to let anyone order him around, and for good or bad, Dib was convinced that there wasn't any force in the universe strong enough to stop Zim. Except himself of course.

No, the most obvious answer was that something was going on with Zim. A thought that was much more terrifying than the one before. But in the end, it didn't matter that much. It wasn't like Dib was going to get so scared that he would run away. He had been forced to go into a junkyard in the middle of the night, and no matter what Zim was planning, Dib wasn't going to let him get off that easily.

He continued his search around the junkyard for a few minutes, finding the place to be more of a maze than anything else. But, though it felt like a maze, it was just an extremely winding road that Dib followed wherever it lead. Without the path he was on, there wouldn't be any way for him to traverse the place without getting impaled by a sharp piece of steel. Which he was starting to think was rather convenient. And by the way, the scrap seemed to have been crushed up against the trash piles, as if the road had been artificially made. He could it. He was on Zim's trail.

As he walked, wholly occupied by his thoughts, he unknowingly reached the end of the trail. But it was only once he looked ahead, that he realized what he had walked into.

It looked like a giant arena, as the area seemed to be in the form of a circle. The ground was nearly completely flat and free from the junk, revealing the dead earth beneath. The area itself was fairly large, probably half the size of a football field. And directly in the middle was a pile of scrap, just sitting neatly by itself.