-REBOOTING: ONE MOMENT-

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FILE: [INVADER ZIM]/The-Rats-Of-NIMH…

-LOG ENTRY 19-

AFTERMATH:EXE.06-24-2010

If the cab driver noticed the body Dib held was leaking dark green blood all over the back-seat, he didn't mention it. This was possibly due to the fact that the back-seat was already covered in a number of suspicious stains—adding a few more wouldn't make a difference. Dib just hoped none of them were toxic enough to eat through his pants.

Dib glanced down at the trembling alien, and swallowed thickly.

Zim screamed a lot, and about a lot of things.

He screamed about taking over the world. He screamed whenever he came in contact with meat. He screamed when he got rained on. He screamed at the little girls who went around selling cookies. He screamed whenever the class got a new pet. He screamed at Dib at least three times a day. He screamed when he was happy, or angry, or terrified. Sometimes he screamed for absolutely no reason, at all. In fact, he screamed so often, that everyone had long ago come to accept it as normal Zim-behavior. Most of the people they'd grown up with hardly even noticed these days, ignoring it like the white-noise of a radio constantly switching between 96-point-twit and Tourettes FM.

Zim wasn't screaming now.

Aside from his harsh panting, Zim was being very quiet. His teeth were gritted in a hard, tight grimace of pain. One hand was clenching and unclenching itself over and over and over, while the other was fisted in Dib's shirt. His antennae were laid flat against his head, which was pressed firmly against Dib's shoulder. The silence crawled under Dib's skin and itched at his brain with its wrong-ness.

But Zim had been hurt loads of times before, Dib reasoned with himself, a little angrily. It wasn't like this was anything new. Like the time all the skin on his legs had been stripped off to fight an enormous, swollen Queen Louse. Or the time he'd been catapulted out of the dimensional gateway in Dib's head so hard he'd broken his spine in five places. Or the many times he'd tried wooing Tak. But no matter what it was, no matter how badly he got injured, Zim always seemed to be just fine the very next day. Besides, if he had the energy to scream his head off about it between death threats and obnoxious commentary, then Dib figured he was probably fine.

Dib's eyes darted back down to his nemesis—to the nasty, jagged wound that disappeared into Dib's borrowed coat and continued to weep blood so dark it looked almost black in the dim light—and thought about what he would do if Zim died here in this filthy car. He wasn't surprised to find that his brain found the thought wholly unthinkable, like trying to imagine what a new color in the spectrum might look like.

Try it. It's impossible.

Dib felt like his brain was short-circuiting. Hadn't he wanted this? Hadn't he dreamed about this? Yes. Yes, he had. But he'd always pictured it differently. Zim, on display somewhere in a glass tube, beaten (for now) but proud and alive and intact. And Dib, standing victorious, his father and his classmates and his peers all heaping praise at his feet: 'Oh, you were right all along, Dib!' and 'How could we have ever doubted you!' or maybe 'I'm so proud of you, son!'

But mostly, 'Well, looks like you caught me. Great job, stink-beast. You win.'

That last part would have been uttered with a great deal of contempt and sarcasm, but it was still validation, it still counted. No doubt Zim would have eventually worked out a way to escape, and then the whole thing would have started all over again. Dib felt his stomach turn over at the realization that he'd really had no idea what he'd actually do if Zim was ever caught. He'd always just assumed it would never happen, or that Zim would get away. Even if there was a bit of dissecting, it was never like…that. In Dib's mind, he always seemed to conveniently forget that things of that nature were supposed to hurt.

Maybe, a traitorous little voice whispered, he hadn't even wanted to catch Zim. Maybe all he'd wanted was to just chase the alien forever…After all, the Chase was always so much more fun…

Seriously? Dib asked himself in disgusted disbelief. Then…what was the point?

His eyes drifted down again, and tracked across Zim's face. In that moment, Zim opened his eyes and looked up at him. The color was wrong. Instead a deep ruby red, they'd faded to a milky pink, filmed over in a haze of confused agony. Dib's heart did a funny sort of twist when he realized Zim had absolutely no idea who he was, or what was going on.

He'd never seen the Irken looking so…vulnerable, before. And before, Dib might have reveled in that. Now, it just seemed to make him sick. Whatever fantasies he'd had about catching and dissecting Zim, they were nothing in the face of raw reality. Childish daydreams, that's all they'd been. He knew that now, and as Dib regarded his sworn enemy, he felt those dreams curl up and die.

"Hey…hey, you still with me?" he asked. "Come on, Zim, you're better than this. Stay awake, okay? We're almost there."

Zim gazed blearily at him, unrecognizing, and then turned his head back into Dib's shoulder and closed his eyes with a shuddering sigh.

He couldn't move his arms, so Dib reached down and bit down on one of Zim's antennae. Hard. Zim gasped and jerked, his teeth snapping in furious indignation, but the haze was fading as the old spark of Hate You came surging back. That's better, Dib thought smugly. Just stay with me.

Dib threw some money at the diver, who muttered something about drunken kids, and gingerly carried Zim up the walkway towards the front door. His head was buzzing, and he swayed slightly on his feet, as the world decided it would be a great time to start slowly spinning in circles. Shock, he noted vaguely. He was probably going into shock.

With some difficulty he managed to get the door open, and paused for a moment on the threshold.

"Hi, BABY!" GIR hollered shrilly from the couch, waving enthusiastically and spilling soda all down his front. Dib briefly considered dumping Zim on the couch and calling it a night. But the cushions were littered with taco wrappers and sticky-looking stains, and Dib decided it was pretty pointless to save his arch nemesis only to let him die from infection.

"GIR, is there a med-bay in this place somewhere?" he asked, though why he asked he wasn't quite sure, as he wasn't likely to get an answer that made any kind of sense. GIR tilted his head, and seemed to be thinking really hard about it for a moment. This is what it looked like:

SQUARE! TRIANGLE! CIRCLE! 128937…

BEE!

OoooOOooOOOOoooEEeeeEEEEeeeEEEeEEEEEEEeeeeooOOOooooOOoooOOOOOoooo…

Waht3v3r u do…

Whrevr u goooooo~

Wahtev3r it is

THE NOBUNNIES KNOW

…know what?

i doooon't knoooow

Taco Weenies! DO YOU !seineeW ocaT

"Whatchu want a monkey for?" GIR wanted to know. "You gonna make Monkey Pie?"

"No, I—ugh. Why did I even bother?" Dib muttered, shaking his head. He considered the toilet-elevator a moment, but he didn't fancy a trek through miles of underground tunnels looking for an infirmary that might not even be there, for all he knew, while Zim bled all down his front. Besides, the alien was getting heavy. Maybe the computer would help?

"Hey, computer?" Dib called, uncertain if the thing could even hear him up here. No answer. He tried again. "Computer!"

"...it won't…answer…to you."

Dib swallowed what felt suspiciously like a very relieved sigh, and looked down. Zim was still limp and shaking, his head lolling against Dib's shoulder, but his eyes were open and glaring up at him.

GIR appeared to have finally noticed who Dib was carrying. He threw himself off the couch and began to run in stupid little circles around Dib's feet.

"Awwww~you got married!" he cried, waving his arms pointlessly. "Married! Married! Can I play with the babies?"

Dib thought it best to ignore him. Zim looked like he wanted to shout at the little robot until his lungs exploded, but knew the effort would have been a bit much. Instead, he settled for trying to scowl a hole through GIR's head. It was largely ineffective.

"It answered me before, when I came looking for you," Dib said, trying to keep his voice even. Zim gave a weak snort, but even that small movement caused him to wince.

"Only because…I wasn't here," he said, and managed to sound superior despite the situation. He coughed, and a trail of blood slipped from the corner of his mouth. Dib took a shuddering breath and looked away.

"Are you…are you gonna be okay…?" he asked, in a small, uncertain voice. "What do I…?"

Zim sneered, and opened his mouth to retort, no doubt about how the Irken race was vastly superior to the weak and fragile humans in every single way, and that his so-much-better-than-yours Irken body was already repairing the damage, what little of it there actually was. But then he coughed again—wet and choking—splattering blood across Dib's glasses, and his entire body seized up. A small whine was strangled in his throat, and Dib realized he was fighting not to scream again.

"Zim…" he started.

"My PAK—" Zim gasped, his voice fast and breathless, like he was afraid he wouldn't be able to get the words out before his brain collapsed. "I c-can't…they did something—"

"What? What do we do?" Dib asked, completely at a loss. Thankfully, Zim was too busy freaking out to notice. "Zim," he said again, more firmly this time, and Zim's eyes cut towards him immediately, breathing fast. "What do we do?"

"I—I don't—"

"Bullshit," Dib snarled. "Come on, think. There's gotta be something."

Zim blinked up at him, wide-eyed, confused and uncomprehending and lost. Dib sighed, wondering, not for the first time, how the idiot had ever become an Invader.

"What if I…? Could I take a look?" Dib asked, slowly. "Maybe I can—"

But Zim was already snapping his teeth, his antennae laid back against his head. He squirmed slightly, one hand pushing against Dib's chest, but he wasn't strong enough to pull out of his grasp. He panted, his eyes shut tightly, and shook his head.

"NO—No, you'll…!"

"Zim, look at me."

Zim drew in a shaking breath, and turned his head to snap at Dib, his eyes narrow and defiant. He hated this. He hated feeling so weak and helpless and completely at the human's mercy. And really, if Dib decided to go poking through his PAK, there wasn't a hell of a lot he could do to stop it. But then the look in Dib's eyes got through the cloud of pain and fear, and Zim's brain stuttered to an uncertain halt.

"Please," Dib murmured, so quietly Zim almost didn't catch it. "Please let me help."

Zim shook his head again, more out of sheer bewilderment than anything else. "Why are you…?"

Dib had been wondering the same thing himself, and he thought he had an answer. Or at least one he thought Zim might be able to understand.

"Because you getting killed off by someone else would just be wrong," he said, and his mouth quirked into a sharp, crooked grin. "Not to mention, really stupid. I'm the one who's gonna take you out, got that?"

Zim snorted at him, and a somewhat hysterical laugh bubbled up through the blood in his lungs and filled his mouth with a sweet, metallic taste. Dib lowered the Irken down onto the couch, dumping the trash onto the floor, and Zim settled stiffly against a cushion with a grimace that was one part disgust and three parts pain.

"So, tell me how this works, yeah?" Dib asked, gesturing towards the PAK, and keeping his voice low and neutral. Zim was starting to look like a very nervous gazelle that knew there was a pride of lions somewhere in the tall grass, but just couldn't see them yet. Zim's claws sank reflexively into the couch cushion, and he stared fixedly at the opposite wall, reminding himself several times that he was in no shape to do this on his own and that he would most likely die if Dib didn't fix whatever the hell those Irking scientists had done to him. He sucked in a steadying breath and shut his eyes.

"There's a catch…n-near the top edge…" he said, trying to stop himself shaking. His vision was swimming, and there was a constant aching throb permeating what felt like his entire nervous system. His PAK was equipped to deal with bodily harm, and every time he'd been injured in the past, it would inject a swarm of nanobots directly into his bloodstream. They helped with the clotting, encouraged new cells to grow, stitched skin and bone back together. He could usually heal most injuries within a few hours, or overnight if it was particularly bad.

But nothing was working now. He couldn't even will the thing open himself.

It must be mentioned, that up until this point, GIR had been blissfully skoodging around on the floor. That is to say, he was sitting on the carpet and pulling his own butt around in circles like a retarded dog trying to get at an itch. In doing so he was working up a sizeable amount of static electricity. That electricity finally shorted out in his brain, and he suddenly became aware that SOMETHING…was WRONG.

Dib reached for the PAK, and felt around until he found the little indent Zim was talking about. He also felt the Irken shudder hard at his touch, and he hesitated. A good chunk of his brain was bouncing up and down in giddy ecstasy at finally getting to look inside the thing, while the rest was too stunned to really think straight, still reeling from what had happened, and all but foaming at the mouth from too much happening too quickly.

But even with all that going on, the stark fear on Zim's face was pretty hard to miss.

"Hey," he said softly, tentatively touching the Irken's shoulder. Zim flinched. "Look, I'll admit that at any other time, I'd've jumped at a chance like this—been wanting to see inside this thing for years. And…maybe I would've tried taking it apart…"

Zim stiffened at that admission, biting savagely down on a small, frightened noise at the thought of another stinking primitive poking around his PAK, touching things they couldn't possibly understand, taking apart his memories and his mind and everything he was. He almost felt physically sick, and he tried to move off the couch and away—not again—please not again—

But Dib stopped him, holding him gently but firmly in place.

"But I won't," he said quietly. "I promise, I won't do anything. I won't mess with it. I'm just gonna fix it."

"…You swear?" asked Zim, turning his head slightly to look at the boy, and Dib blinked at the helpless terror in the Irken's eyes. "You swear not to take or..or b-break anything?"

"I swear," Dib said evenly, his heart thudding.

"My PAK…it-it's private…" Zim whispered, turning away to press his face into the cushion. There was a tiny black box in his head, where all the Bad Things he didn't want to think about went. It was shoved into the deepest, darkest corner of his mind, and all kinds of thoughts and distractions and coping mechanisms (made out of construction paper and glue) were piled on top of it. The last four days had gone into that box, and they were trying to get out. But they couldn't get out, couldn't be allowed, because if they did they'd probably attack the saner(ish) parts of his mind and chew on the furniture and make him remember…"You shouldn't even be touching it—not authorized—forbidden…"

"Zim. It's alright. Just…trust me, okay?"

Zim lifted his head to give Dib what was perhaps the driest glare he'd ever received in his entire life—and he'd grown up with Gaz as a sister. Dib snorted.

"Okay, maybe that is asking a bit much," he chuckled. "But just this once, I promise not to do anything. Even I've got my limits."

Zim was quiet for a full minute, his red eyes narrowed in suspicion, his claws working at the cushion like some neurotic green cat-person until he'd ripped a sizeable hole right through the fabric and was pulling out all the stuffing. He knew he didn't have much of a choice, and there was a quiet warning going off his brain that informed him that if he didn't get help soon it would be Very Bad, but the black box was rattling and his insides were twisting into knots and he couldn't bring himself to answer—why wouldn't the stink-beast just open the damnable thing and get it over with?

…Why wasn't he opening the PAK?

Zim glanced back at him, unsure and anxious. Dib gazed back at him steadily, and just sat there, waiting. Waiting for what? He knew how to open the PAK, Zim had just told him, and it was obvious he was just itching to get a look inside so—

With a jolt, Zim realized Dib was waiting for him. For…permission.

Meanwhile, GIR was frozen in place, staring off into the middle distance in a confusion-haze of wrong-ness. The TV wasn't exploding, so that couldn't be it. There were snacks in his tummy. The floor was still holding everything up. What could it be? Perhaps if he kept rubbing his butt around on the carpet he would be able to figure it out. This was in no way a coherent thought or idea, nor did the notion present itself as such, since GIR's mind was far too squishy for linear things like 'If I do this, I'll get this' (unless it involved tacos).

He just really liked rubbing his butt around on the carpet.

Zim's PAK had broken down once, on Irk.

It hadn't been a problem he could fix on his own, so he was sent to a large white building nestled in the center of Cerebrum. They'd made him sit in a large white room for hours, as the problem apparently hadn't been as serious as the problems of other Irkens. There were screaming smeets involved, and if there weren't enough smeets, they blasted noise from the intercom. The chairs were hard and uncomfortable, there was no television, no snacks, and the tables were littered with tabloids all about the latest Invader gossip. Who had taken over what planet, what sort of cleansing chalk they used, how many stripes they wore on their uniform, the usual. (Zim had looked, but he never seemed to turn up in those things. (Then again, perhaps he was just too amazing for the tabloids to comprehend.))

When it was FINALLY his turn, they'd called him into a small white room and made him lie down on a hard steel table. There was more waiting after that. And then even more waiting. And then the Mechanic had arrived, and opened his PAK without even a 'Hello' or 'How are you doing' or anything like a proper warning. The Mechanics didn't ask for permission. They didn't even ask what was wrong, most of the time. They just went in, figured it out, fixed it, good bye, next patient please.

The only other beings allowed to access a PAK were the Control Brains, but of course they didn't need permission.

The only other beings who had ever touched Zim's PAK hadn't asked permission, either.

The Black Box snapped its lid and threatened to spill out all over his head.

"Zim? You okay to start?"

But Dib was asking permission. It was obvious now he wasn't going to do anything without it. That knowledge settled over Zim's brain like a security blanket. It wasn't anything like trust, not in the slightest, not even close—just the desperate need to believe that Dib would actually do as he said for once, and not do anything bad. It was a flimsy belief, about as thin as plastic wrap and just as see-though, and it would crumple in on itself at the slightest provocation.

But it was all he had, and he clung to it like it was a piece of driftwood out in the middle of the ocean. Surrounded by WATER and…sharks, and giant squids, and…and sea urchins. He didn't actually know what a sea urchin was, but it sounded terrifying.

His quivering antennae slowly relaxed, and his hands stopped tearing his couch apart. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and gave the smallest of nods. Dib regarded him a moment longer, and then pressed the button.

The PAK opened like the wing casings on a lady-bug. A knot of wires, some of them stripped and frayed, sent up sparks and Zim jerked, biting down on his tongue. Dib stared into the mess of cables, switches and knobs and wondered if he was really up to this task. But then he noticed the labels printed on the inside of the PAK's casing, and that everything was color-coded and marked, and he grinned.

Quietly, he reached up and tapped his glasses, because of course, Dib's glasses were not ordinary glasses. They were Google Glass. With a few minor adjustments. Namely, the display chip was tiny, resembling nothing so much as a small gear set into the right edge, which he used to scroll through the list of Apps available. They displayed maps and emails and the like, but there was also a language translation program, which included, but was not limited to, Spanish, German, French and Irken. There was also a small video recorder, and a few stray thoughts considered turning it on, out of sheer habit—before he remembered there wasn't much of a point in exposing Zim if he didn't actually want people experimenting on him afterwards.

Dib wasn't sure what to do with this new revelation just yet—and didn't like the weird things it was doing to his insides—so he concentrated on the PAK instead.

He noted the areas marked MEMORY DRIVE, CHARGING CELL, ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSOR, BIOELECTRIC REGULATOR, and WEAPON SYSTEM. There was also PAIN CENTER, FEAR INDUCER, SUPERIORITY COMPLEX, OBEDIENCE PROTOCOLS, PRIMARY DIRECTIVE, and buried under a tangle of wires, marked in what looked suspiciously like crayon, Happy-ness Thingy. Beneath that someone had drawn a little smiley face.

Right smack in the middle of all this, printed in black bold letters, was the word:

Z.I.M

Dib scratched his head. "Really?" he said, more to himself than anyone else. "Is that…is that IT? Eleven things?"

"What do you mean, 'is that IT?'" Zim asked him through now-gritted teeth, slowly turning his head so that he could beam a concentrated hate-death-glare right through the boy's stupid thick skull. It occurred to Dib that he sounded incredibly insulted. It also occurred to Dib that he wouldn't get another opportunity like this any time soon, and that if he was too insulting, Zim might snap the PAK shut on his fingers out of sheer spite and never let him near it again. While he thought about this, Zim was working himself into what looked to be a spectacular fit of rage. "How DARE you—Zim's PAK is AMAZING—You should HONORED I even let you TOUCH it you FILTHY, HORRIBLE SACK OF—"

"That's not what I meant," Dib interjected before Zim actually started frothing at the mouth. "It's just—I guess I expected there to be…more, you know?"

"More what, exactly?" Zim asked, his sharp teeth neatly biting off the end of each word, so as to make it undeniably clear and succinct that he was not happy with this conversation. Dib was fully aware that if the Irken hadn't been immobilized at the moment, he would have tried to scratch his eyes out by now.

"Well, okay, what about imagination?" Dib pointed out. "Or...or dreams? Do Irkens even do that?"

"What are 'dreams'?" Zim wanted to know, his lip curling in disgust as if merely uttering the word left a bad taste in his mouth. "One of your stupid hyuuman emotions?"

"Er, no, it's…Well, it's kind of hard to describe if you've never had them," Dib replied with a feeble kind of shrug. "You sleep, I know you do, I've seen you napping at skool. You…you seriously don't have dreams?"

"What does that have to do with Sleep Mode?" Zim asked, utterly mystified now.

"Ugh, you know what, never mind," Dib sighed, reaching up to rub at the bridge of his nose. "Let's just…get this over with. What am I doing here?"

Zim muttered darkly to himself for a moment about the insanity/stupidity of humans, and shifted around trying to find a more comfortable position.

"I think they were tampering with my Bioelectric Regulation Unit," Zim explained, his tone suggesting he was going to do horrific things to those scientists once he was healed. "Which, by the way, is much better than your disgusting little meat-pump of a heart. They didn't disconnect anything really …important…but—"

"Oh, yeah, I see it," Dib said. "There's a few cables unplugged here. So I just have to reconnect them?"

"Yes, Dib-thing," Zim replied. "…And for your information, there are twelve things."

"Huh?" Dib said, confused for a second before he realized what Zim was talking about. "But I can only see…Oh, yeah, you're right. Twelve things. My mistake."

Dib stared at the thing for a moment. PERSONALITY CHIP, it said. It was nestled in a pocket just below Z.I.M, almost hidden, a small unobtrusive micro-processor about half the size of a Fig Newton. It hit him then, that this, this tiny breakable thing, was Zim. The thought was almost too massive, too ridiculous, to even wrap his brain around it. And it would be simplicity itself, the easiest thing in the world, to just reach in and unplug it. What would happen, if he did? Would Zim become a blank slate? A zombie? A robotic killing machine?

Or maybe it'd be just like a lobotomy, and Zim would turn into a drooling vegetable.

The thought that those scientists could have taken this, not even realizing what it was, made him feel cold.

"I suppose it's not surprising the primitive, rotting sack of meat you call a brain couldn't even count that high, but—" Zim was ranting, completely oblivious.

"I am wrist deep inside the thing that keeps you alive, Zim," Dib said casually, tearing his eyes away from the Chip. "Just in case you forgot, or something."

Zim snapped his teeth shut on whatever it was he was about to say. "Oh—Oh, yes. Indeed you are. Erm, uh, you can forget about all that 'rotting sack of meat' stuff. I was, ah, joking! You know, just joking around with your head—which isn't big at all! So…uh…carry on, then."

Dib rolled his eyes, resisting the urge to smack the Invader, and set to work. He found that reconnecting the cables was like plugging in a lamp. He had to fight the urge to laugh at this, as Zim probably wouldn't have found it very reassuring. The blue wire went into the blue port, and the red wire went into the red port, and the green wire went into the green port…

"Wow, a monkey could do this," Dib observed dryly.

"Well, then, it's a good thing you are a monkey," Zim couldn't help but retort. "But in a good way!" he added hastily, in case Dib snapped out of whatever it was that had suddenly made him want to be helpful, and remembered he'd been trying to dissect the Invader since Elementary Skool. The human's mysterious bout of madness was disturbing, to say the least, but Zim was nothing if not an opportunist.

Dib shook his head, and briefly toyed with the idea of what might happen if he put the blue wire into the red port. But, really, Zim seemed to have been through enough for one week. Maybe some other time.

Besides, he'd already promised not to mess.

The last plug went in with a soft click, there was a whirring buzz, and all four of Zim's PAK-legs shot out to clamp like pincers around Dib's waist.

"Hey!" he squawked indignantly as he was shoved unceremoniously to the other side of the couch.

"Zim…th-th-thhhanks you, Dib-worm, but your assistance is no longer required," Zim informed him haughtily, trying not to choke upon his obligatory gratitude. "I can take it from here. Now get out of my house."

"Come on, what?!" Dib cried, angrily. "I just saved your life, you ungrateful little worm. That's the best you can do?"

"Yes, obviously you've lost your mind somehow," Zim retorted waspishly, giving him a suspicious look and trying to lift himself up off the couch with a small grimace. "I'd like you to remove yourself from the premises before your sanity returns, and you remember we're supposed to be mortal enemies."

"I have not gone insane, you idiot," Dib growled, scrubbing a hand down his face in frustration. "I already told you—"

"You expect me to believe that LIE?" Zim asked, lifting a brow. "You've been going on about turning me into that filthsome group of yours for years, Dib-smell."

"Well, what the hell was I supposed to do?" Dib demanded, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "Leave you like that?"

Zim paused for a moment, considering him.

"…I would have," he said quietly, and for once, Dib could see he was being completely honest. "Why didn't you?"

Dib blinked, his mouth working silently. Then he set his jaw, and rose slowly to his feet. Zim struggled, but he finally got his legs working, and faced Dib down with a challenging, distrustful eye. His knees were shaking slightly, but he refused to show anything other than the usual disdain.

"Because you needed help," Dib said at length, in a low voice, his hands in his pockets and his head down. But his golden eyes were fixed on Zim. "And because I wouldn't be much of a human being if I said no."

"Well, that's the thing, Dib-stink," Zim sneered, his antennae twitching uncertainly. "I'm not human."

Dib blew out a breath, and nodded once.

"Yeah," he said. "I know."

"Human beings did this," Zim said coldly, gesturing to the slowly healing wound on his chest. The deep gash, still stained a dark green, had begun to seep a light pink substance as the nanobots started doing their job again. "And it proves what I've been saying for years. Your species is HORRIBLE, and the sooner I BURN IT OFF THE FACE OF THE PLANET, the better. Now GET OUT."

Dib stared at him, an unreadable expression in his eyes that made Zim's squeedly-spooch turn in on itself for absolutely no reason Zim could fathom…and then he turned and left.

Zim winced, and the second he was gone, flopped down onto the couch with a relieved sigh. Standing was going to be difficult for the next few hours. In fact, moving at all was right down at the bottom of things he planned to do for the foreseeable future.

"GIR! Fetch a cooling pack!" he ordered, leaning his head back against the back of the couch and closing his eyes. "And clean this place up! It's a WRECK."

Silence.

Zim peeked open one eye, to find that GIR was standing in the middle of the room, staring up at him in wide-eyed, slack-jawed stupefaction. For the last several minutes, the feeling that something was terribly, horribly wrong had been building up in GIR's circuitry, going around and around and around in with an increasing amount of urgency. Only GIR was not equipped to deal with this kind of feeling, nor did he have the capacity to understand what it was.

He just knew he had to do something. Immediately. At once.

GIR began making a sound. This seemed like an appropriate course of action.

"Eeeeeeee….."

It began as a small, high-pitched whining noise that slowly began building in volume…

"EeeeEEEEEeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEE…"

Until he was screaming it at the very tip-top of his vocal processors, sounding as if someone had just totally ruined his entire life.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Zim clapped his hands over his antennae and screamed, which seemed like an appropriate response to this wholly inexplicable development. He had no clue why his robot was screaming, and was starting to wonder if the little thing had finally broken, when GIR's now super-sonic emergency/confusion alarm warped into a series of yelping, howling, and nonsense. This display of bewildering insanity finally broke the last of Zim's brittle coping defenses, and they both dissolved into a positive feedback loop of hysterical and completely unnecessary noise.

[…FILE LOADING: STAND BY…]

PLEASE REMAIN CALM

Disclaimer: There will be no more disclaimers after this. I have decided they're stupid, and a complete waste of time. I think you get the picture by now.

Sooooo….yeah. I've been living over in the Doctor Who Universe for over a year now, and then suddenly got bitten by the ZADR bug right the fuck out of nowhere. I was just going along, minding my own business, when BAM, and I was all like, "I HAVE TO WRITE INVADER ZIM RIGHT NAOW!"

And so I give you this.

Also spent some time reformatting things (just in case any of my returning readers didn't notice) to get myself back into the story—had to re-read it, since I lost my computer (it was stolen) and therefor the nice little plot line I'd written up—and then I got this neat little idea. What if the story ITSELF started glitching out because of what was happening? And that led down a whole different path of awesome new story ideas, and I am going to REALLY, REALLY TRY to finish this thing.

I WILL. ONE DAY.

One of the reasons I didn't post a hiatus. Hiatus just means you're giving up, and haven't admitted it yet.

Anyway, sorry for the very, very long wait, and thank you everyone for being so patient and encouraging and awesome. You guys are the best fanz ever.

-Raha

PS: Last chapter? That was nine pages of nine. I don't know the significance of that number.