Ayam

Loss

Dib stared down at his arm. Or rather, his lack of an arm.

"I... I still can't believe you just let them eat my arm off."

Zim shifted uncomfortably. He knew he'd have to face this sooner or later, but he'd preferred later. The effects of the hypnosis, however, had worn off shortly after guards had entered the arena to drag Zim and Dib back to their cell. The Devorrahs had attacked the guards, furious at the interruption of the story Zim had been telling. As the pair were roughly dragged away, one Devorrah had even wailed, But who will finish the story?

"They'd already eaten most of your arm by the time I got to you. There was no help for it."

"No thanks to you. If you hadn't suddenly zoned out, we might have been able to hold them off." Dib snapped.

"Ayam was telling me not to fight." Zim muttered.

Dib snorted. "I don't believe you. You just got scared and froze, didn't you? Admit it!"

"Don't be stupid! I wasn't going to die that miserably without a fight! But Ayam said not to. He said to trust him."

"That's crap." Dib said shortly. "That means he was okay with the fact that I was going to lose my arm."

"You're alive," Zim remarked, "Which wouldn't be the case if I'd decided to do it my way."

Dib glared at him. "I notice you got away fine. What, so you're Ayam's special messenger, and nothing bad happens to you cause you have to deliver the message, huh?"

Zim stared at him coldly, and deliberately twitched his remaining antenna. "At least," He hissed, "You had the benefit of not feeling what was done to you, which is more than I can say."

Dib flinched, looking away.

Zim continued, "I trusted what Ayam said, and we are alive. For now, at least."

"But now what?" Dib flung his remaining arm wide. "Now what, Zim? We just rot here until they decide to find some other way of killing us, or shutting us up? I didn't sign up for this! I'm just a kid! My Dad thinks I'm at space camp, for crying out loud. I thought we'd be telling a few key aliens the basics of the message and leaving the rest up to chance."

"Chance?" Zim's eyes narrowed. "You would leave something this important up to chance? Oh, right, I forgot. It isn't your kind that we're talking about, it's filthy aliens, right? YOU have nothing to worry about, since Ayam already gave your kind Records. Never mind about MY kind, that doesn't even have a CLUE about any of this. They're following leaders that couldn't care less whether they live or die no matter how much effort they put into their missions." His voice rose in intensity. "Before all this I didn't even know what a soul was and when I did, I dismissed the idea because I probably didn't have one. Dib! There isn't even a word in my language for 'soul'! There isn't a concept for 'forgiveness'! All there is is honor, duty, servitude, and revenge that never ends!"

"Zim—"

"All you care about is that stupid rock that sits there, destroying itself all by itself because it forgot everything it was made for in the first place! But you think that just because you have the Records, yours is the worthier kind! Because Ayam was human first, that obviously he must favor you!"

"Zim!"

"And maybe he does favor you, but that doesn't mean you leave something this important to chance!"

"Zim, you idiot, shut up and listen!" Dib yelled. Then he paused. "Actually, I didn't have anything to say, I just wanted you to stop shouting. Wait, no, I do have something to say. Look, this is hard, okay? This isn't what I expected, and I just lost my arm. I'm trying to figure all this out still, and know what else? I don't hear Ayam's voice. You're lucky, Zim. Because I don't hear him like that. I'd love to hear him right now, it would make things a lot easier. He could tell me exactly what I'm supposed to do, and exactly why he thought it was necessary for me to lose my arm." Zim opened his mouth, but Dib cut him off. "Yeah, I know, we're alive and blah blah blah. Great. Wonderful. It still hurts to lose a part of my body! I mean, I have to retrain my other arm how to write and do everything else my right arm used to do. I shouldn't even be here right now, I should be back on Earth, not on some planet on the edge of the known universe recovering from a... a... what were those things?"

"Devorrahs."

"From a Devorrah attack. You see! I shouldn't even have to know what a Devorrah is." He pulled his knees up to his chest, resting his arm on top of them. "It's just all... really overwhelming."

Zim looked at Dib for a long time. He forgot, at times, how young his former enemy was. Barely out of smeethood, even by Earth standards.

"If there's one thing I've learned about humans, it's how resilient they can be." Zim spoke slowly, carefully choosing his words. "This will be difficult, but you will learn to overcome it." He sighed. "Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if, when you got back, your parental unit threw himself into designing a new super-arm for you."

Dib chuckled at that. "True. He would."

The door to their cell slid aside. Zim and Dib tensed as four guards aimed lasers at them and barked, "You've been summoned to the Tallests' judgment hall. Come."

Rising, they filed out of the cell and walked down the halls, flanked by the guards. Dib nudged Zim and whispered, "Hey spaceboy, you know, maybe this is your chance to tell the Tallests about Ayam. You didn't really get a chance last time, they just sent us to the arena."

Zim's expression hardened. "Them? They don't deserve to hear about Ayam."

Dib glanced at him thoughtfully. "You didn't either, did you?"

This gave Zim pause, but he didn't get to think much about it. They approached the door to the Tallests' judgment hall. The guards then stopped and pulled Dib forward to stand beside Zim. Two guards stepped away, and the other two grabbed the handles of the door at arm's length. Zim frowned, a prickle of unease sliding down his spine. The guards yanked open the doors and pressed themselves flat against the wall.

It was a simple room, with a purple floor and a red ceiling. Its back wall was a bank of clear panels showing the expanse of space. In the center of the room hovered a dais, on which the Tallests stood.

All this Zim registered in half a second. In the other half, he registered Purple, blindfolded, pointing a laser at them. He half-turned to Dib in an attempt to shove him out of the way, but it was too late. The shot had been fired in the first half-second, and Zim could only watch as a laser bolt buried itself in the middle of Dib's face.