Hey Spacejerk

A bomb. That's what dying was like, a bomb going off overhead. Debris pelted Dib, throwing him back. His teeth clacked together and he tasted blood. For a simulation, this feels awfully real.

Chunks of concrete tumbled slowly to a stop around him. Overhead, a cluster of skywires hung still, frozen about a car-length above his body. They turned aside, drawing tighter together. From the opposite direction, a large sheet of steel tumbled through the air like an unwieldy frisbee, slicing off several yards of the skywire cluster.

"No!" The voice came in stereo. A Zim to the right and a Zim to the left closed in on Dib's location. One ripped an advertisement screen from its pole while the other attacked the street for concrete chunks. They shrieked in unison, "I decide who lives and dies on this planet! I earned the right! I fought for the right! This planet is mine!"

A wild grin spread across Dib's face. "Yes! Yes, you mutated cockroach, you tell it off!"

"Food service drone Zim." The sickly purple sky thundered ominously with the PAK's reproach as glints twinkled overhead from horizon to horizon. "Submit for the good of the empire."

"NNNNNO!" Zims poured back into the street, surrounding Dib in a defensive circle. Dozens of voices swelled to hundreds. "NO I WANT TO LIVE! YOU ABANDONED ME! YOU DON'T GET TO DECIDE MY FATE!"

Wires plunged like falling stars, only to be met with precision projectiles. Sheets of glass and metal slag flew through the air to deflect the onslaught. Airborne Zims attacked with spiderlegs and blaster fire, while most of the ground force projected shields, pulling close together to overlap the edges.

One Zim scrambled to Dib's side, jamming his claws between Dib's shins and the street. "This is my PAK!" he growled, straining. "My programming! And you will... hnnnnnnnngh... you will submit...." He hauled back, his arms cracking. "Sub.... Submit.... To... Zim..."

The ground didn't give. Dib glanced around. Other Zims had no trouble ripping up pieces of the buildings and streets around them. Dib leaned toward this Zim, raising his voice to be heard. "It isn't working. We can figure this out later, right now you have to focus on the PAK! Your shields have gaps, you have to pull them tighter!"

Zim ignored him, shredding his gloves against the unyielding ground.

"Zim!" Dib shoved him back. A wire hit the ground right between Dib's hands. With a growl, Zim yanked out a blaster and sprayed the length of the wire with a volley that left a large stretch of it useless, sparking and twitching as it retracted through a shielding gap back into the sky. He hurried back to Dib's side and resumed clawing at the ground.

"Zim, knock it off!" Dib swatted at him, sending him flying again. "Go shore up your defens-UGH!"

Zim's right hook sent him flat-backed to the ground. Zim hopped up onto his chest and took two fistfulls of Dib's shirt, yanking him up until all Dib could see was furious scarlet eyes.

"Cease your blowhardy orders as if I don't know what it is I need to do! I do not need your orders, you pile of indiscriminately compacted filth! I need you doing something!" Several nearby Zims echoed his words, surrounding Dib with his demand. "I need you to do what you did just a moment ago! This formation can hold for a long time, but we have less than ten minutes before we are utterly erased, so holding this formation is useless unless there is another plan!"

Concrete and glass rained down from another deflection. A skywire slipped through a gap in the shielding to spear through two Zims at once. Dib stared blankly, flipping through their options. Another plan? The plan was for Zim to take down the PAK programming. This wasn't enough?