Part One -

"Coming, Earthling?"

He sighed, wandering aimlessly down the hall, bookbag thrown over his shoulder, weighing his back down with heavy textbooks. Why he was suddenly loaded with homework he didn't know. His first year in High Skool, and this is what greeted him two weeks into the first quarter. Shaking his head he rounded the corner and kicked the front doors open, the rich smell of damp earth wafting in on the slight breeze the double doors made.

Rain. A sigh. And then he took notice of the creature sitting dejectedly on the bottom step, just inches out of the rain but still relatively safe from harm. He glared at the rain as it made its course, unblinking and unmoving, like wound springs, or a coiled snake prepared to strike. Dib blinked, took a step forward; the slightest brush of his boot on concrete was enough to make Zim glance quickly over his shoulder, purple eyes narrowed suspiciously. When he saw who it was, he relaxed slightly, but still stood and faced him.

"Dib-stink," came his acknowledgement of Dib's presence. Dib scowled.

"What are you doing just sitting here?" he asked, shifting the shoulder strap of his bag and crossing his arms.

"Well, worm-baby, the sky is leaking," Zim replied, pointing in a generally "up" direction. "As you once deducted from careful observations," there was a snarl in his voice that made Dib want to step back, "I cannot get wet. Therefore, I must sit here and wait for dry." To prove his point, he sat. Against the wall. Where he could not possibly be shoved into the rain, unless the wall were to suddenly become animate...He scooted forward a few inches. Crazier things had happened.

"Well, why don't you just call--"

"Not that it's any of your buisness, filth-monkey, but G.I.R. is currently sleeping," Zim cut him off with the explanation, already too impatient to wait for the rest of the question. "He wore his battery down with his foolish antics, and I ordered him into a shutdown for at least thirty-two hours for him to recharge." He stopped there, returning to gazing out at the dismal weather, chin rested in his gloved palm, elbow on his knee.

He had grown since they entered High Skool; he was still short compared to Dib (who had had an amazing growth spurt of about six inches), but his vertically-challenged attributes made him all the more cuter...

What. The hell. Was I just thinking? Dib shook himself. I really need sleep. He hefted the bag's weight up a bit, and then said, "Well, I'm heading home" to which Zim replied, "Begone with you, foul Earth-larva." Dib rolled his eyes and started home; pausing on the sidewalk when he reached the street, he glanced back. Zim hadn't moved an inch, eyes cold and watchful as the sky continued to 'leak'. Despite that, when Dib looked at the bigger picture, the alien looked, for lack of better word, lonely.

And although he hated himself with each step, he walked back up to the stone steps of the High Skool and deposited his heavy overcoat on the creature's head, sufficiently muting any rantings before they started. "Put that on and walk. I'm following you to your base to make sure I get it back."

Zim stared at him, no small amount of suspicion and mistrust in his lense-covered eyes. "I don't want your filthy garments," he said eventually, holding the article of clothing back out to him while adopting a proud and superior expression. "You're wretched human body would probably not last for long in such cruel weather."

"...Zim. The rain is warm." But seeing as the alien loathed it, nothing would change Zim's settled dissaproval on that particular aspect of weather; thus, Dib sighed and trudged up the steps to sit by his green peer. The creature shifted away suspiciously (somewhere inside him, in a place he could not decifer, Dib was hurt; did Zim really think he'd shove him into the rain?...Then again...) "Then I guess I'll just wait with you; who knows what you could be up to."

The alien scowled, and opened his mouth to say something that would probably make little sense and yet still somehow get his point across efficiently (current point being: Go. Away), but was interrupted by the squealing of tires and a human's scream. They both spun around to find a scene from a Hollywood thriller playing before their eyes; a car speeding quickly away from a limp form lying in the middle of the elsewise deserted street...

Dib inhaled sharply, eyes wide, and abandoned his coat and bag, racing forward. He dropped to his knees at the young man's side, trembling at the sheer horror of it all. The man was still conscious, eyes restless behind almost-closed eyelids, and there was no blood. His hands fluttered helplessly over the man, ready to pull him over onto his back, but then suddenly Zim's voice snapped, "Don't move him, Dib-stink!"

Dib blinked up to see Zim standing by him in the road, using Dib's jacket as a tent/shield from the rain, peering at the man with an expert's eye. "You shouldn't move him," he said quieter, crouching slightly. Silence reigned for about ten seconds, and then Zim was running off, coat and all, leaving Dib there with the man he wasn't supposed to move, who was probably in a lot of pain if the conscious twitching had anything to do with it, on an empty street, alone, in the rain.

There were several things Dib would have liked to have said to whatever God it was that decided his karma from recent years sucked, but before he could gather them all together in a comprehensible list, Zim came trotting back, breathing heavier than before, towing a pig-shaped balloon three times bigger than himself along with him. From the way he seemed relieved Dib and the man were still there, some time must have passed. Dib frowned inwardly, still a mess of panic; was he (Dib) really this worried for a stranger? The answer was obvious, and he sighed. Zim was pressing several buttons on a small remote attatched to the base of the rope connected to the pig (o.o), and then the pig was a small platform topped by a glass dome, said platform sliding under the man and closing back up again, showing itself as a pig once more. Zim seemed satisfied, and glanced back at the black-haired boy. "Coming, Earthling?"

"To where?"

Zim blinked. "Does your dwelling-hole not have an infirmary?"

... "Oh! The hospital!"

"Yes, yes," Zim said impatiently, tugging on the pig's rope. "Lead the way, human."

---

As they neared the building, Zim stopped around the corner, backing into an out-of-the-way alley on the same block. He frowned slightly, pondering how this should be done. The jacket started to slip off his head and he gasped, yanking back into the relative safety of a doorway; in doing so, he knocked against a large cardboard box, that fell over to reveal various contents. Articles of clothing, toys, shoes, some books, a baseball and a skateboard.

"How am I so brilliant?!" Zim shrieked in triumph, punching the air. Dib, over his case of 'freaking-out-ness', set to gathering what they would need to make an efficient gurney of sorts.

Once they'd settled the man (who, by the way, had lapsed into unconsciousness on the way to the hospital) on their rolley-thing, Dib glanced back at Zim for assitence in rolling him up to the hospital, but the alien was muttering as the rain began to seep through the jacket, and said, "I have to stay with the pig. It wouldn't do for some human worm to find it."

Moments later when Dib emerged from the hospital, a nurse followed after him, gushing with thanks and admiration for his bringing the man in; he denied full credit, and glanced at the alley he'd left Zim in; the pig, the alien and his jacket were gone.

"To where?"

Part One - End

A/N: Different from my usual style of writing, I believe. In case my faithful readers are wondering: YES, I plan on updating my Naruto fics soon! I wanted to make them all lengthy updates, since you've been waiting for so long...;-; Would you rather I updated with only a few paragraphs? -hopeful- But, no, even if you did I wouldn't. I hate it when authors do that, and it'd be hard to pick up from there.

Anywho...for people reading this who've no clue what I'm talking about...Thanks so much for reading my first Invader Zim ficcy! ((It is ZADR in future chapters. Light ZADR, but ZADR nonetheless.))