disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim.
warnings: language, violence.

A/N: Because all the good jokes were taken. (;

The Ants Go Marching By
Prologue
Stray

As all things would have it, higher powers not withstanding, it started off as a fairly—well to be blunt, this isn't a normal thing to begin with—standard day for the human meat-child named Dib. Dib Membrane, son of this hoity-toity, superfabulous REAL scientist man, and a test tube. But totally not in the sexual way. Like, he's a clone, and not that the test tube was his mother or anything stupid like that. Well. Technically. But I digress, and continue on with this appaling narration: it started off as a standard day. Beginning with the morning routine, which consisted of being smacked in the face by the alarm clock (via space-monkey), and screamed at by his less than nice sister. Who, on a daily basis, would threaten to do various things to him such as ripping out his intestines, poking his eyes out, castration: the usual.

He would then proceed to search around for his glasses, which often ended up on the floor, and he didn't quite understand with all the 'advanced' technology out there, that they couldn't cure bad vision. It was just his luck, was the final assumption after hours of contemplation one night while staring at a lamp. Just his luck. Then after rolling out of bed, untangling himself from the devil sheets, he would pick out some random clothes, and head into his bathroom for a quick shower. And then it was breakfast. Normally a bowl of nondescript cereal with cute, little marshmallows of happy faces and sad faces. Sometimes eggs if he was feeling up to it. Or if he didn't really feel like anything, then it was a bannana. Potasium. Yum.

Then—oh, oh, maybe I should start using other words, hmmm? Like 'next' or.. or.. 'then'! (the thesauras ran away)—he would watch the news for a half an hour before it was time to get on the bus. One year left of being bullied on the bus, and he would be free to go to college or something. Get an aircar. Because his dad was still a jackass, despite being rich, and refused to get either of his kids transportation besides the old-fangled bi-cycle. Stingy creatures, parents are, yes. Yes, yes, where was I? The news. He would watch a half an hour of the dreaded news, listening to the weather reports, and the current murder story. This time it was about a man who had fourteen dead, decapitated women in his wall.

Yes, the world is full of freaks: get over it. At least you won't be alone.

After that half an hour of depressing information, he would grab his bag and head out the front door with his sister in tow. Dib would take a deep breath of the purple air of Aeon-3, and make his way to the corner of the sidewalk, trying to not interrupt Gaz and her GameSlave. He would then wait for five minutes until the hoverbus arrived, and he would and his sister would take their spot in the first seat. He would stare out the window, and Gaz would play one of her thousands upon thousands of violent, disturbing video games. Today's choice was a good old-fashioned zombie slaying thing. Lots of helpless screaming came from the purple device.

Twenty-minutes and fifteen, squealing teenagers later, they would arrive at the High School™; where it was Dib's final year, and Gaz's junior year. He would sit through hours upon hours of arduous learning, the only break being lunch, when he sat amongst Gaz and her video-gaming friends. May their brains rot, and their thumbs be calloused.

Today was different, though. He decided to do something he rarely did; ditch. So at the start of lunch, he hid in the bathroom in the stall next to the door, and waited until the sounds in the halls passed before sneaking out. The security would be more focused on the cafeteria than the hallways, so he made it out and into the City™ with little to no hassle, except for that one security guard hanging around a classroom—but that had been easy to bypass with his amazing ninja skills (honed after so many years running from Gaz). Free to wander aimlessly down the streets, he ignored the looks from the citizens who actually read the newspaper, and had read the occasional article about him instead of the ones about his dad.

It was easy to ignore them; too easy, but that's a concept for another day.

Instead, let's focus on Dib, and the fact that he noticed a rather ominous group of (snickering) Vortians crowded around a streetlight ahead; it wasn't that he had anything against the slim, gray aliens, it was just that, well. They scared the shit out of him when they were in clusters. Not as, well, much as other species, but still. Ominous. Deciding it would be best to skirt around them, he slipped down an alleyway. He walked past the rusty cans, torn open trash bags, and the whimpering dumpster- whimpering dumpster?

"When did dumpsters start whimpering?" he muttered to no one, his nasty habit of speaking his thoughts aloud showing, and adjusted his glasses nervously. This was bad. Bad. Bad. A bad situation to be in, because of an unspoken rule in this City™: do not investigate. Anything. Not even if you saw a severed limb on the ground; you didn't do anything about it. Nothing. Nadda. Zip. Zilch. It always, always lead to bad things. Once it lead a woman to a nest of mutated spiders, which used her living carcass as a breeding ground for their eggs, and there was this other time that a Meekrob ended up trapped in a vase for fifty years.

Strange, scary things happened when you investigated.

So why was it that he was ignoring this unspoken, but helpful, rule? Curiosity. That horrible, evil thing was what lead him to investigate the strange, whimpering dumpster. He stood before the rusted, metal thing, trying to figure out where exactly the sound came from. It certainly didn't come from inside the filthy container; considering that the sound was crisp, and clear. Albiet weakening by the second. So Dib came to the conclusion that the source of the whimper was coming from underneath (after all, how could it be behind the dumpster—there was a wall).

Preparing himself by pulling down his sleeves so that if the thing under there was going to bite him, it might be deterred by the taste of fabric. Not that the jacket sleeve would protect against most things. He got down on his knees and peered under the bin; but found there were a few trashbags in the way. Annoyed, he pulled the bags out of the way, and looked around in the darkness. What he saw made him gasp, and pull back in shock. It wasn't so—it simply couldn't be. Couldn't. It just didn't happen.

Curled up against the slimy wall was a diminuitive Irken: it was small, smaller than any Irken Dib had ever seen. Hell, he knew that most Irkens were pretty short, but he had never seen anything other than the average heighted ones (and once, the Tallest on the news). This Irken seemed to be about the size of the average house cat: from the way it was curled up, it reminded him of a cat. And the whimpering was definitely coming from the green alien, now that he was close enough. But shocked him even more.

Ever since the 23/13 incident, no one messed with Irkens; not one. The poor sap who had dared mess with an Irken had ended up hanging from his toes, and fed to a creepy brain parasite. And the whole execution had been broadcasted across the universe. The message clear: don't fuck with the Irkens. Or you will end up fucked.

Which ended up justifying his breaking the unspoken rule: he was helping an Irken, which probably, maybe, hopefully, equalled some form of reward. Like a rare chance at getting his hands on some Irken technology—oh, yes, that justified the means. So he crawled under the bin just enough so that he could pull the alien out and cradle it in his arms. Once in the light, he was able to get a better look at the poor fellow. The damage was horrendous enough that he had to run his hands over Irken's PAK just to check if that wasn't damaged. Finding that it wasn't, he then took to assessing the rest of the damage.

Dib examined the head first: it was covered with discolorations that he took as bruises, one of the antennae was torn; a sort of tinted ooze seeping out of it. There were cuts and scratches around the tightly closed eyes, and one angry looking red mark on it's cheek. From what he could see through the alien's torn, pink shirt, there were bruises and cuts on the torso as well. All in all, the little guy was in a horrid state. He would need medical attention: but Dib was certain that the local clinic wouldn't have the capabilities of helping the Irken.

Which is how he ended up taking the Irken home.

In the fourty-five minutes that it took to walk home, the alien only stirred once, to whimper out in pained English mixed with a strange series of clicks, whistles and pops that Dib assumed was Irken. The English part was thus; "No, no... regret it, filth..." Which, now that he thought about it, didn't really make much sense unless the Irken had been talking about his attackers, which made sense. Upon entering his house, he settled the Irken on the living room couch, then made his way to the bathroom where he collected gauze, medical tape, scissors, band-aids, and cooling gel. With his arms full of medical supplies, Dib set about patching the alien's injuries.

He was pleased to note that the legendary Irken regenerative abilities were working, as the bruises were less noticeable, and the torn antennae had repaired itself. Still, he covered, wrapped, and taped the open sores and wounds so that they wouldn't be exposed to any more bacteria than they already had been.

It just wouldn't do if the Irken got sick ontop of everything else.

"Argh," Dib started off his tangent with the uninteligible sound, before deciding it would be easier to speak his woes clearly, "I am so dead, so, so screwed. What was I thinking? Gaz'll... I don't even wanna think about it. That'll make it worse, won't it?" He used the excuse that instead of talking to himself, he was talking to the alien, trying to get a lucid response or hoping that hearing voices might wake the fellow up. Angry or not.

When his 'plan' didn't work, he sighed in defeat and turned on the telly. Reality TV? Nah. A horror flick? Nope. Golf? You're kidding, right? Cartoons? Duh. Settling in for a rousing rerun of Courage, the Cowardly Dog, he sat next to the small alien, to be extra careful just in case he woke up and freaked out. Dib really, really didn't want to see an Irken freakout: if the 23/13 incident was anything to go by... it would be scary.

A little too scary for his tastes. So instead, he settled for glancing at the sleeping (or at least, he assumed it was sleep) alien every other commercial break. About fifteen half-hour showings of Courage later, and he was interrupted from his steady routine by the door slamming open, and an oppressive aura suffocating the life out of the room. Even the alien had started shivering at his sister's evil-ness.

Gaz homed in on her brother like a shark smelling blood: and she saw the Irken, too. Her reaction was a bit too subdued, and it felt like she hadn't yet decided on what she was going to do to him, when she ground out, "What is that doing here?"

An Irken freakout might be scary, but a Gaz freakout was even scarier.

There were several ways this could have ended: Dib's death, Gaz having a sudden change of her black heart, or something equally lucky. Unfortunately for him, his genius response was, "Um." Dammit.

"Put that back out on the street you found it, now," her tone was dangerously close to the breaking point, close to throwing both Dib and the alien out onto the street.

His answer was desperate: "It's only every other day that you find someone dying in an alleyway; and never an Irken, Gaz," Dib scowled, pointing at the tiny, green alien curled up on the couch. His sister followed his finger to look back at the alien, her own scowl deepening. But all of a sudden, as if knowing that it was in trouble, the PAK let out a loud beep, followed by a string of numbers.

"System Reboot. Facilities Recovered. Memory Drive: 10% recovered."

And that is how the story starts.

A/N: I'm almost positive I know where I'm going with this. Yes, the prologue's short. Boo-hoo. They're supposed to be. Like movie trailers. Or something like that. Long enough to have stuff in them, but not long enough to satisfy. Yaaaayyy. Also: formatting is a bitch. It refuses to let me do what I waaaanntttt and make it look purdy. So.. sad. They need some options where you can have different types of fonts, so that way, mechanical voices can have that mechanical feel. Seriously.

So, uh, if you liked it (ew) tell me. That'll probably give me enough motivation to continue on with the first chapter. Seriously. (: Or not. No skin off my back.