A Parade of Indignities

Chapter 5: Of Space Cadets and Dib's Horrible Identity Crisis of Doom

"Are you insane?!" The voice pierced the air in the wake of the scuffle as shadows remerged and began to surround Larb.

He panted and let the plasma blaster drop to the ground beside him. All he could do now was glower maniacally at the defective's ship as it tore through the sky, higher and higher until it was nothing more than a speck.

Tenn latched onto Larb's shoulder and spun him around to face her. In one swift move, she tore off his gas mask and spat in his face. "You could have killed us all!"

He slipped from her grasp and swiped one claw savagely across her face in retaliation. "I was only completing what I had been ordered to do! The Tallest gave us strict orders!"

The others glanced from Tenn, who hissed and clutched at her wounded cheek, and back to Larb.

"What's going to happen to us now?" He demanded. His wide eyes were livid and the kinks at the end of his antennae were standing on end and pointed forward.

Several allowed their eyes to slip downwards as the question lingered heavily in the air.

What's going to happen to us now?

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The amalgam of emotions Dib felt had died down by the next day. Or so he tried to convince himself.

Zim is dead.

He told himself this over and over in an attempt to subdue his anxiety from the night before and remind himself of where his priorities were supposed to lie. It was a simple fact that Zim couldn't possibly still be alive. Why should Dib be bothered by that? If he couldn't bring himself to feel any sort of positive feelings in response, he must try to feel nothing at all. Afterall, wasn't well-placed apathy the secret to never getting hurt? His own sister would certainly argue in favor of that claim.

He continued to trudge to skool, sidestepping the residual sludge from last night's snowfall as it melted in the morning sun. In a dream, he flowed into the crowds of students entering the skool and drifted into his first period class.

As to be expected, Zim's seat sat dormant. The one course he shared with him, Intro to American Literature, had previously served as Dib's best opportunity to spy on him—much to the detriment of his grade in the class. As usual, throngs of groggy students stumbled into the classroom, many bearing disheveled clothing and steaming coffee cups. The room was silent as they took their seats and begrudgingly reached into their backpacks for their textbooks. The teacher, a portly balding man named Mr. Carrigan, rose from his desk with a clipboard and began to take attendance.

Dib slumped in his seat and pressed his fingers to his temples. The sleepy voices of his classmates announced their presence around him. Not one student acknowledged the lack of Zim's attendance and Mr. Carrigan merely glanced at the empty desk and flicked the box beside Zim's name to record an unexcused absence.

Dib allowed himself a single glance at the desk, which turned into a hollow gaze that made the world seem to drop off around him. He turned his head back to the front of the room and pulled out his composition book.

The monotonous droning of Mr. Carrigan's lecture barely reached his ears as a numbness settled over him and pressed gently on his chest.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

"Ugghhh..."

One green hand squeezed into a fist and immediately went slack again. Zim shook his head back and forth slowly, as if fending off a nightmare. Something dry and crumbly was being shoved into his face repeatedly, stirring him from his slumber. Finally, his sunken eyes fluttered open and met a bright, cyan pair that hovered over him.