Pleecy and Diz walked down a hallway lower down in Pleecy's labs. This particular one led to the 'blueprint room', as Pleecy called it; it was actually a room for planning as well as blueprints. Blueprints are planning, so why not just call it that?
"So, Pleecy, how's he going to be? I-I mean," Pleecy looked to her left at her, "he'll be ok, right? Like no side effects
"Oh," the Mystic said in an understanding tone. "Well, he'll be fine." Pleecy's face seemed bored, tired even; her eyelids were just slightly drooped, looking in a way like the Tallests' eyes always were. Her tone was blunt and ending, like that was the last word on the subject needed and that one sentence explained it all. She looked back ahead, antennae bobbing a little with the motion.
The tone of her voice set Diz's commander-trained-with-speech-patterned brain off automatically. "And
?" she coaxed, slightly annoyed that the Blue Irken was hiding something. "The whole story, please," she said after a few seconds in the politely demanding tone of a commander.
Pleecy sighed, deflating momentarily. "I set a spell to lock their memories once they got home and to whatever place it is that they usually are so it would seem as if the past few weeks had been normal. Except for Gaz, obviously. Dib's perfectly fine, like I said, but his DNA is slightly
'different' now. That's it."
"Locked their memories?" Diz asked with a small trace of skepticality.
"Heh, yeah," she breathed. "Locking memories is similar to wiping their brain of some memory, but instead of erasing it, the memory is moved from the usual memory banks of the brain to the deep subconscious area: the person who's memory was locked would then only ever know of the memory through vague wisps of dream, as if they never knew it," her explanation carried an air of magic.
and you said his DNA was altered?"
"Not altered, per say, just
different. He's been Irken before, so now he'll have a few tweaks in his DNA even though he's been changed back."
Pleecy replied testily with a slight glare. "You can stop interrogating me: we're almost to the Blueprint Room, anyway. That's where debriefings happen. Like the dream wisps I mentioned. Or some other things. And before you say 'like' again, there might be instances where he shows traits of Irken, like being exceptional with technology unexplainably, or being affected by water in some way. That's the altered DNA part: some small bits of Dib's DNA would have still stayed Irken, like those same parts had stayed human when the Accident occurred. But they're so
'unseeable', let's say, that a standard human DNA test wouldn't really notice them. But Irken tests could. Or any other could. And an energy being could detect the Irken *Specieal Energy pattern from him now. That's about it. So other than tiny random occurrences of being unable to take a bath or eat meat, he's absolutely fine." They stopped before the door to the 'Blueprint Room'. Pleecy's mark glowed oh-so slightly, a purple-blue-green-opaque-grayish color, and a small luminous sphere was produced from the mark and floated to the blue digital scanner that looked like a human hand scanner to the left of the large, metal, dried blood, dark red-ish colored door; classic Irken color scheme. It opened, revealing a room that looked a lot like a Star Gate command room. "Now get in," she said crankily.
Diz purred not exactly to herself as she walked through the tall doorway, "Dreamy wisps, eh?"
Pleecy started in with her. "Oh shut it. That's what they are. Magical, parapsychological, wispily wistpity Dream Wisps," she joked.
~Approximately a year later, around the end of February
Dib plopped his head in his pale hands and stared out at the rain pelting the world, the street, the oddly green plants that had begun dotting the city lately; in yards, in random cracks in the sidewalk, even the trees around town seemed to have grown fuller, straighter, and obviously green. It was so strange, green leaves. Apparently rare in their current state of world, because he'd never really seen pure green leaves.
And another thing that was strange was the fact that, in the past year (give or take), rain made him feel
.wary. It was hard to explain, but sometimes he didn't want to go into it, or near water, in fact, usually by some random piece of instinct or intuition. And believe it or not, he'd had times where even cold water hurt to touch! But these were times he could barely believe. He's human, that's improbable. Why would water that's not hot to the touch be hurtful?
Other than that, the past year had been quite decent: Pleecy and his dad seemed to get along pretty well, doing experiments or checking each other's work (mainly Pleecy correcting Professor Membrane, oddly) and such. Dib's father even seemed to have shaped up a bit as a dad since Pleecy started coming over more often not much of a shape up, but still, that in itself is a miracle.
Agent Darkbootie even introduced Dib to an Examiner: that is, a Swollen Eyeball member who analyzes evidence professionally that is sent in. Examiners are usually kept secret from other SE members, so Dib was excitedly befuddled when DarkBootie assigned one specific Examiner called Agent Bluewing to help Dib with his investigations, mainly the digital evidence. Then Gaz yelled at Dib for all his excited noises.
Pleecy had started inviting the Membrane children over for dinner sometimes, when their father worked late and couldn't come too (it was amazing: she got him to come home 3 times a week!), and Dib had to admit, her cooking was pretty decent. Way better than the Skool's food! Gaz didn't like some of it, strangely enough. She'd ask what the heck was in it, and Dib would say to her it's fine, then the next time Pleecy made that dish there'd be two different kinds, one of which Gaz would like. He'd just figured that it was two different styles of cooking. Both tasted great to him, anyway. Oh well, Gaz had always been curious when it came to food.
The Skool was still as torturous, speaking of sketchy food and bullying kids, and Zim was still
well, as 'Zimmy' as ever, though he seemed to have started to not bug Dib as much since last Easter -- more scowly and grudging instead of hating, really. He guessed that had to do with the way Pleecy glared at Zim when Zim messed with him. Hahahahahahaha!! Stupid alien! Afraid of a female human, are we? Now who's pathetic!?! Huh? Huh? Huh!? Then Pleecy would elbow in the side hard -- and glare at Dib.
Today was one of those days where Dib had somehow finished his homework and one of those days where Pleecy had something to do
Apparently, she was helping another friend of hers with something today. Sooo Dib was now bored, leaning with his head in his hand against the window and sill and watching the rain come down. Every once in a while his eyes might flick to the driveway, or to the kitchen since he was debating getting a snack.
Another finger of lightning flicked swiftly to the earth with a flash of white light and a drum pound of thunder seconds later, over the city park again. That was the fifth strike in a row Dib had watched hit that exact area. His brow furrowed skeptically. Something was undeniably weird over there, and begging for him to investigate. Dib grabbed his vest from its drying spot on the living room chair and his haphazardly-tossed-to-the-couch camera on his hurried way out the door, ignoring Gaz's complaints about him leaving and not coming home until late and her threats of locking all the doors, and the windows.
He pulled his arm through the vest's sleeve whilst crossing the road, which in hindsight was a bad idea, but hey, he survived it! That counts for something! The rain pelted down, hard and larger drops than usual, and the wind started to slowly pick up from about zero speed.
Another lightning strike slashed down and split the evening, and the flash of light glinted against Dib's glasses. At least, Dib thought it was still evening; it was only after supper, but the clouds covered the sun thickly, much worse than the city smog he was horribly used to normally did.
Six strikes in the same place! That's certainly not normal! Something is definitely up
he thought to himself as he hurried through the airborne waterfall of a storm. He pulled his vest around him a little, even though that wouldn't really do much, "Man, I why didn't I bring an umbrella? Stupid!"
After a few minutes of wet running probably best called sloshing Dib was thankful for the shelter of the trees near the park's entrance and stopped to catch his breath. He frowned determinedly at it, pulling the sleeves of his vest back up and fixing the camera around his neck before he strided in.
It wasn't long before he saw the crash site.
He only walked a few minutes in the natural maze of woodland before rounding a tree-made rightward corner and gasping. His eyes widened at the mess before him; a ship similar to Zim's had crashed, a ditch dug out behind it for a few meters and a small number of green bushes around the area lit slightly on fire. "Oh my God
" he mused, amazed, moving farther towards the ship and to the tree's other side. The smell of ozone was heavy in this area. Another strike of lightning to his right made him jump, withdrawing his arms to himself and moving his weight to one leg in a flinch. A very small movement caught his eye off to his right, and he relaxed when he saw something leaned over by a tree nearby.
The agent walked over curiously, a few steps away from the wreckage. A green, ash-covered form sat at the base of a lightly blackened tree. He could see the tips of dual-ball-topped, curly antennae dangling near its hips, and it was leaned over with its hands supporting itself from the ground. Its outfit, scorched and ashy but still shining its natural glinting gold underneath, reminded him of Pleecy's; baggy with opened, long sleeves and a fluffy, multi-layered, V-shaped collar. When it blinked, he saw the large, gilt, Irken eyes flash under the green, dirty skin momentarily. Even its bright, shiny purple eyelashes were somewhat dirty, enough so that the sheen of them was dulled. Dib walked over to in front of the slightly bent over form in a joyous daze, at a loss for words.
" Dib stammered to himself, shaky and pointing with bent elbow. The being's eyelids perked up from their drowsy look, the golden orbs under them rolling slowly upwards from the ground to him. They seemed to glow or glitter in the dark like Zim's would.
Just like Zim.
Even though he told himself not to look in the eyes, he thought they seemed desolate and lifeless, almost. The gold and green alien pulled itself back against the tree, pushing off just a little bit with its arms and its back doing the rest, the charred fabric rustling as it moved. Its no: she, stupid!back plopped softly against the tree with a small thump. She still looked at Dib expectantly, groggily. Only when it glittered before another strike did Dib notice the lightning-with-two-dots marking on her forehead. He flinched again from the lightning as it struck her before relaxing and looking back down at the Irken. Did he feel pity? What it just excitement dampened by the rain? Was it rage bubbling up?