Why is this random app the only thing that'll load?
His back hit the brick wall and immediately bruised. Dib's legs crumpled beneath him, numb, the breath forced from his lungs like a pair of deflated balloons. He tried to drag in a strangled gasp of air, spots flickering in front of his eyes, but didn't have much time before a pointy knee was being jammed just beneath the cavity of his ribs.
He gagged. Bile stung the back of his throat like acid, but he didn't vomit. The shhhhck of alien metal dragging across grime-caked asphalt made his ears throb, before there was the familiar, dangerous pressure of the sharp tip pressing against his jugular. Zim's face was twisted into an arrogant, victorious grin above him, pink bug eyes eerily bright against the dimming sky- although he grimaced when he spotted the clunk of muck stuck to the end of his PAK leg, cool against Dib's throat. The grimace made the ugly blue bruise on the alien's jaw stretch. Dib's bloody mouth stretched into a grin of his own. He'd put that there.
Zim growled, a low clicking at the base of his throat that Dib would have missed had they not been so close, and pressed more of his weight down onto his knee. Dib grunted, suppressed a gag, and tried not to accidentally skewer himself on the PAK leg still pressed to his throat.
"You and your insufferable meddling," Zim said, twisting his shirt in his fists and poking holes through it with his claws, "Zim is going to make you regret this, you stupid, filthy-"
Two of Dib's fingers, stained black with dirt, poked right into Zim's bulbous eyes. They sunk in, like he'd just jabbed them into a marshmallow, and he had a split second to be torn between how gross that was and how cool before the alien opened his mouth and shrieked. Zim jerked back instinctively, hand shooting to his eyes, and Dib took the opportunity to raise his leg and kick him right in the chest.
Zim was small, even for a supposedly fourteen year old 'normal human worm baby,' but he was also freakishly strong. Dib had long-since learned that, if he got him off-balance and landed a blow just hard enough in the right spot, he wouldn't have the time to catch and adjust himself properly. So that was how Zim was sent flying right onto his PAK, metal scraping and limbs flailing wildly. The deadly spike of the PAK leg tore away from Dib's jugular and lodged itself into the wall just behind Zim in an attempt to catch him, cracking brick in a spray of dust. Zim was back on his feet, snarling and spitting and screaming his rage, nearly as quickly as he'd gone down, but Dib was already launching off the ground and ramming his shoulder into his stomach.
What should have happened was that Zim would slam against the wall behind him, and Dib would get a few good punches in that would leave nasty bruises both on alien skin and his own knuckles, maybe even get the damn water blaster clicked around his forearm to work even though the jerk had torn it open in a spray of sparking wires. And Zim would rip the skin from his bones with his claws, would stitch fresh scars into his flesh, would try to drop him into a vat of boiling hot dog water. And Dib would limp home and lick his wounds, and hopefully not see his dad until the bruises had faded enough to be unnoticeable, less he be dragged into another lecture on 'responsibilities' and 'not fighting with other kids,' which would inevitably loop back to him being 'delusional' and how he had to give up his 'fake science' already when he tries (again, again, his mouth going numb with rage at how much he's tried- although that could just be from how battered it was thanks to Zim smashing it with a rock) to explain the literal alien trying to kill him and the entirety of the human race.
But that wasn't what happened. Instead what happened, in the span of a second, was this:
-Dib's foot, moving to push himself further forward, met thin, empty air instead of the hard asphalt he'd been expecting.
-The soar towards the brick wall seemed to extend, further, further, until he was sure he must have somehow miscalculated how close it had actually been.
-He suddenly found himself falling towards the ground.
-The dim light of the setting sun, just barely reaching the shadows of the alleyway, warped and then became hot and blinding.
-The fall to the ground lengthened, and for half a moment, they were suspended in midair. Then that moment passed and the impact with the ground rattled his teeth in his skull.
-Ringing silence.
-Buzzing.
Dib's stunned brain was sluggish. His vision blurred, adjusting to the sudden bright lights. The ground beneath his hand was hard but not enough to be asphalt, rough like frayed rope. Over the top of the ringing silence was the buzzing hum of fluorescent lights.
He raised his head just as he realised there was something digging into his stomach, and his vision was swimming with shimmering, startled pink. Then it twisted with rage and the PAK leg was launching him through the air again with a newly bruised belly.
"GET OFF OF ZIM!"
Dib's head cracked a the wall and he slumped on the carpeted floor with a groan. He was looking up at ugly, patterned wallpaper. A stained, tiled ceiling. The unnatural burn of an achingly bright fluorescent light.
"Zim," he groaned, raising a hand to prod at the fresh lump, "You idiot."
He dragged his head up, abruptly heavy. Zim was on his feet, two PAK legs extended and posed defensively, but he wasn't looking at Dib. Instead, he was taking in their new surroundings; ugly wallpaper, ugly carpet, ugly lights. It stank of dust and dampness, cool like there was air conditioning turned on somewhere, although Dib was certain he would have been able to pick up its whirring over the buzzing lights if there had been. As the bang to his head slowly reduced itself to a dull, unpleasant throb, Dib's heart spiked in sudden, amazed excitement as what he was seeing finally clicked into place- then sank to the pits of his stomach and went cold.
The area spread out and out and out in all directions, walls stacked in rows or twisted around like the towering hedges of a maze. There were no signs nailed in place, no tables or chairs or… anything. It was just pure, empty space, with musty carpet and never-ending walls.
Zim's antennae were twitching rapidly. From one instant to the next, he crossed the floor, hauled Dib from the carpet, and slammed him into the ugly wall. Dib's head throbbed and he spat blood.
"Get the hell off of me, you freak!"
A low growl vibrated in the alien's throat, his face inches from his own. His weird bug-eyes glinted in the lighting. The spike of the PAK leg was inching towards his throat again. "What," Zim spat, and Dib wondered how loudly he would screech if he yanked on his still twitching antenna, "Did you do?"
