New story guys, hooraaay! :D It'll be another zadf, and although school is back in session so I'm not sure how fast updates will be, as usual you have my word- it won't be abandoned.

Enjoy.

"Gir! Bring me the doublehexaplygon!"

The Irken's stern, commanding voice rang out through the dim metal halls of his underground laboratory as if projecting from everywhere at once as he stood impatiently over a small metallic object on a table. A few seconds of unresponsive silence passed, before one of the alien's antennae twitched.

"GIR! I SAID-"

"Saaaay pleeease."

The high pitched voice rang out cheerily from some point in the shadowy workroom, and Zim swore. Debating with himself the demeaning nature of the request, he swallowed his pride enough to mumble out a strangled "p…ple…please."

A happy "Woo!" echoed through the room, fading away with increasing quiet as the word bounced off the walls and fell in volume with the sound wave's every repetition. A metallic deadweight dropped onto Zim's head from above, and the Irken crashed to the ground with a heavy thump as Gir remained on top of him and sucked his pincer-like hand blankly.

"Ugh… the doublehexaplygon, Gir?" Zim grunted, pushing the android off and standing up with a few pops and cracks signaling the realignment of his spine. Holding an arm out, Zim narrowed his eyes at his quirky servant in displeasure.

"Ohhh yeah." Gir remembered, pulling out his hand with a suction-y pop and flapping it excitedly, sending saliva spewing across the room. Making a disgusted expression, Zim shielded himself as best he could, only peeking through his fingers when the top of Gir's head opened with a mechanical noise. Reaching in, the android pulled out an object and placed it in his master's expectant hand.

Zim's eyelid twitched at the damp bundle quivering in his palm. "Gir… this is a wet Earth kitten. NOT a doublehexaplygon."

The soggy, bedraggled, pathetic orange cat mewed plaintively, and Gir snatched it back and cuddled it close. "I know, but he's reeeeaaaal cute!"

Giving up with a generic exclamation of frustration, Zim pushed past the pair and stomped over to the far end of his workroom himself. Digging through a pile of unusual tools and assorted implements, he pulled out the object he'd been seeking and about-faced to march back to the greatest and most deviously ironic project he'd ever worked on. For despite its small size, this evil little beauty of a device would cripple the Dib worm by-!

"YOOOWWL!"

"AAUUGH!" Zim stumbled over the cat that had woven its way unnoticed between his legs, arms circling wildly in the air in a futile attempt to regain balance.

Becoming intimately familiar with the ground for the second time that day, the Irken cracked open a bright crimson eye at the cold wet fur that slid along his face accompanied by a content purr of happiness.

"Gir! Remove this… this…ehhh…evil creature of hair immediately!" Zim demanded vaguely, leaning on one elbow and using a single claw on his opposite hand to push the dripping pile of fluff away from him.

"His name's Mr. Tickles!" Gir screeched, causing the cat to puff up and slink back comically as Gir tapped toward it like a slow motion horror film with his mouth stretched into an ecstatic smile.

"I don't care what its name is, Gir! Just remove it!" Zim ordered crossly, hauling himself up from the ground and wiping off the orange cat hairs stuck to him.

Cooing, the robot grinned at the thusly dubbed Mr. Tickles as the feline backed up against a wall warily. "Mastah'll like you soon 'nough… you'll see, Mr. Tickles." Gir soothed the petrified cat, picking it up off the floor with a grating of claws and objecting "Mrooowl!"

With the two disturbances out of the way, the Irken let out an aggravated sigh and sidled over to his worktable again. Honestly, why did he even bother asking Gir to assist him? He should have predicted it would end in a hideous explosion, or rubber pigs, or, this time, with an underfoot soaked stray cat. Shaking his head, Zim used the doublehexaplygon to make necessary minute circuit adjustments. Yowls and giggles broke the silence as they filtered down from air vents scattered throughout the labs, and Zim did his best to devote his full attention to his masterpiece. Laboring for what felt like hours, his internal timeclock kept track of the approaching dawn as time ticked away.

Nothing could afford to be wrong.

Nothing could run the risk of not operating to the fullest extent.

And nothing could be left to chance or uncertainty.

After all… the Dib's life depended on it.

Skool; the disgusting place where the festering little eyesores that were Earth children congregated against their wills. Some children were tolerable; others were incorrigible- it mattered not to the disguised alien among them, for Zim hated them all to some degree.

One of the human worm spawns that made a point to trip him in the halls every chance he got was with a group of pig-smelly friends across the courtyard. Zim's sensitive antennae easily picked up his shrill strident voice, and the Irken steered away from it in the hopes of avoiding a confrontation. As appealing as slamming the child of putrid Earth juices into a cement wall was to Zim, he knew from experience violence in skool didn't go over well.

Grumbling to himself at the dredged up memory, Zim took the steps leading inside the building slowly as he headed towards his classroom despite the bell not having rung yet. It was thanks to the horrible Dib beast that he'd discovered what a "detention" was, but the human's black eye for the next few days had never ceased to amuse him even if the few bruises on his own arm were hidden by his uniform.

Because, naturally, why would he afford the Dib meat the honor of knowing he'd inflicted damage on the mighty Zim's incredible physique? Laughing from afar was immensely more gratifying.

Passing the rows of tan numbered lockers, Zim idly read the labels as he brushed by the few other students traveling the hall. 385… 103… 402…207… what insidiously feeble human mind had numbered these anyway? They were clearly deficient in their ability to count, whoever they were…

Stopping before the ancient looking door labeled "P. Bitters", Zim turned the knob and suppressed a shudder of revulsion at the dead cockroach on the door's small windowsill. That bug had been there for eons… what black magic was his teacher using to stop it from decaying in order to keep it as a nice decoration?

Deciding he didn't want to know the nuances of how his immeasurably old teacher achieved the things she did (floating, hissing, causing phones to disappear into pits of flames and send up their tortured spirits, ect.), the Irken shrugged off the train of thought and took the seat by the door that had been his for as long as he could remember.

The sharp intake of breath across the room had Zim biting back the Irken curse word that threatened to escape.

Of course Dib was here early. He hadn't been with his scary sibling in the courtyard like usual, so where else would he have gone? Bracing himself, Zim slowly slid his false lavender eyes over to lock with Dib's suspicious amber ones through that layer of glass he always wore over them.

"So, space monster! What were you doing yesterday? I know you were cloistered up in your freaky little base all night!"

Dib's question was anticipated as Zim drummed his claws along the wood of the desk in a bored fashion. Although they had both advanced a few grades over the years and a few small inches in height, their hauntingly eerie teacher had unfailingly followed them- because it was "her last century teaching before retirement", she had claimed, and that she "had no desire to become acquainted with new, hopeless generations of miserable failures."

That was all well and good for the two archrivals as far as their typical screaming matches were concerned. Ms. Bitters had obviously given up trying to stop the spats between them over the years, opting instead to let them fizzle out in the short timeframe they usually did. Now was such a time, she decided, as she raised a crinkly old lip in distaste and resumed clicking the keys of her keyboard and squinting at the monitor through her oval spectacles.

"For your information, you horrible little smell beast, I was working on an INGENIOUS PLAN!" Zim declared petulantly, crossing his arms and sticking his nonexistent nose up into the air.

Dib leaned in closer from the neighboring desk he'd temporarily perched in, glaring at the alien. "Oh yeah? What? Laser weasels? Robotically controlled squids? Hypnotic gophers? Face it Zim, all of your plans suck. They always have." Dib jabbed at the Irken's pride, knowing he'd hit a nerve when the wig atop his enemies' head lowered in correlation with the antennae beneath it flattening.

"No. Nothing of the sort." Zim brushed the irritation off, waving a hand dismissively. "In fact, I think you'll find out rather soon if you keep poking around the way you always do. You invasive, trespassing little filth monkey."

Dib opened his mouth to shoot an insult back at Zim, but a growl from the teacher's desk at the front of the room made him snap it shut with only an angry look to level at the Irken.

"I'm gonna find out, Zim. And I'm gonna stop it, whatever it is." The human swore determinedly under his breath, knowing the Irken could easily hear him. Zim blinked languidly while keeping his gaze trained on the empty whiteboard, but the slight shift of his wig told Dib he'd heard and acknowledged the threat.

"Oh, I hope you do find out Dib. I hope you do…" Zim thought to himself, training his expression to remain carefully neutral.

Tromping back to his seat at the far end of the classroom, Dib pulled his chair out and slouched in it as the other students filed in lazily at the doleful clamoring of the bell. Flipping open his notebook, Dib clicked the end of a pen against his thigh and searched for his most recent entry. Ah, there it was. Dated yesterday, a Thursday. The entry was brief, detailing only a few paranoid speculations- "Zim seemed unusually happy today. Probably an EEEVIIL new plot!" The word evil was large, bold, underlined, and had mock little devil horns drawn above it with a devil tail wrapping below the word in a loopy squiggle.

What? Dib got bored during Ms. Bitter's endless doom rants just as easily as the next person, and sometimes desperate creativity accosted him. A few more sentences imparted more or less useless information- what Zim had done with his lunch that day (set fire to it without being noticed), the odd word he'd screamed at Squealing Boy when the kid had run away in terror, the fact that the fire drill's alarm had caused him extreme discomfort- mostly just piddly tidbits of data Dib had noticed and recorded to pass the time.

Sliding his dark honey colored eyes to the right, Dib met with false purple irises as he expected. Somehow- and he would probably never know how the Irken did it- Zim occasionally seemed to anticipate Dib's stares. Blue ink flowing across the crisp paper of his paranormal recording book, Dib jotted down the observation.

As pointless and trivial as his discoveries may have been, it was the only way the teen knew how to keep himself occupied until the merciful lunch bell.

The lunch bell that, when it did finally ring, caused a stampede of mass chaos out the door. Pulling his legs and arms inside the little bubble of space that was his desk, Dib still managed to get thocked in the head by an elbow and smacked with a few bookbags.

Zim had apparently exited before or with the herd, as he was nowhere to be seen. Picking up his own blue bag off the linoleum floor, Dib trotted out of the classroom and towards the lunch hall.

Arriving with the mass of the herd already fighting for spaces in line and cutting each other, Dib circumvented the battle of the lunch lines and beelined for his and Gaz's table. His withdrawn sister was playing her GS 4 with the same intensity she had been for the last week. The model was new, and Dib had quickly learned not to disrupt her while she delved into the world of Vampire Piggy Slayer 5- he was still finding hidden roadkill tucked away in his room even though it had been a full week since his infringement on her gaming nirvana.

Still, he couldn't just sit there and say nothing like a dork.

"Uh… how's the game goin', Gaz?"

Gaz didn't even spare him a glance, instead taking a quick second to give Dib the middle finger as she mashed buttons expertly.

Ok, then. Maybe he could just sit at his table silently like a dork.

A brief look across the lunchroom revealed Zim to be painting a plump white chicken with the grayish cafeteria soup with a paintbrush, nodding to himself every so often and writing things down on a sheet of paper before resuming the paint job.

It was innocent enough, even for Zim.

Too innocent. What was he planning!?

As though the alien could sense Dib's internal distress he paused in his activity and looked up, taunting the boy with a crooked grin and quick wave of a few fingers in a fake hello.

Dib glowered back, leaning his head in his hand as he ate his sandwich and continued to observe Zim. There was no use pointing it out- Zim had gotten so good and inventing the craziest lies over the years that if Dib claimed painting a chicken with cafeteria food was rather unusual, Zim would chalk it up to an ancient Ugandian tradition he was studying or some such thing. And, as they always had and likely always would, the students would roll their eyes and ignore the two odd social rejects of the skool and carry on with their lives, unaware of the alien threat that lurked among them.

And that was why it was Dib's responsibility to stop Zim! It was his true purpose in life! His goal and his alone to expose the menace for the danger that he-!

"Dib. Shut up."

The surly voice came from Gaz, and Dib realized he'd been muttering out loud. Clamming up, he pouted and ducked his head between his shoulders a little to avoid Gaz's possible wrath. She seemed to have let it go however, and Dib polished off the rest of his meal with gusto. His appetite was growing along with his body, and he eagerly awaited the day he could look directly down at Zim because he KNEW it would infuriate the Irken to no end. He'd deduced Zim had something of a height complex a few years back, and the few inches he already had over the alien were enough to set the Irken's teeth grinding when they stood toe to toe and the difference was more apparent.

Ruminating idly on various thoughts and concerns that flickered through his mind in the same way any other human would, Dib waited out the rest of the lunch boredly with only speculations on what was for dinner and watching Zim to entertain himself.

The jolting cadence of the bell had the boy hauling himself off the round plastic cafeteria chair after an unacknowledged goodbye to his sister, and flowing with the crowd back to class. Bumping arms with Zim accidentally at one point in the quagmire of students, Dib received a hiss in retaliation. The Irken, however, seemed to interrupt himself mid-hiss as a thought clearly crossed his mind upon seeing his nemesis.

"Dib stink? How hard do you think your spine is, by chance?" Zim asked in false politeness, blinking inquisitively at the other.

Dib lowered an eyebrow uncertainly. "Pretty hard… wait, why!?" He interjected, waving his arms around expressively and narrowly avoiding smacking a random child in the face.

Zim chuckled darkly, sending tremors down Dib's spine. The last time he'd heard a laugh with that level of malice in it, he'd been turned into a giant baloney- surely whatever Zim had planned this time couldn't be worse than that? Reaching out a hand to grasp the alien by the arm and make him explain himself, Dib only swiped at empty air as his enemy melted away between the crush of bodies.

Cursing his luck, Dib resolved to deal with Zim personally after skool. It seemed yet another base infiltration was in order…

Passing the remainder of the day in an irritating loop of possibilities as to what Zim was up to, Dib was in the middle of rolling a pencil back and forth across his desk when the bell rang at last signaling release for the next two days. Scooping up his journal and bag, Dib hightailed it out the door before the majority of the class could squeeze through the small opening all at once.

Even with his own fast reflexes Zim was still unnaturally faster, having made it halfway down the hallway by the time Dib fought his way out of the classroom. Gripping the strap on his backpack, Dib frowned and stuffed his notebook into it and hefted the bag up higher on his shoulder. Resolutely following the alien off campus and en route to his house, Dib made every effort to remain undetected. A corner here, a bush there, a fat listless hobo on a curb at one point… cover was everywhere if one only knew where to look, and after tailing Zim like this for years Dib had gotten good at using his surroundings to his advantage.

But not quite good enough. Zim acted blissfully ignorant of the human tracking him home, but even under his wig he could pick up the scuffing of the Dib stalker's boots on the pavement and his quick tense breathing when he felt he'd had a close call in being detected. Smirking while still facing away from the Dib smell, Zim led his fly onward farther into his intricate web.

Today, things would change. Zim had been planning this for a while now, and was excited to implement it. What would Dib be like when all was complete? Already an above averagely intelligent human, if he had the physiology to match his intellect he would truly be a worthy rival for ZIM!

Worthy-er, Zim reminded himself. The human had been single handedly foiling his plans for years, but the mere fact that he was human was problematic. Humans died- already Dib had aged more over a few years than Irkens did over a few decades, and Zim had reluctantly realized Dib wouldn't always be around.

The realization had been a surprisingly cold and hollow one that blindsided Zim late one night while working in his labs, and it had caused him to idly think for hours.

Keeping the Dib monster alive was important. He didn't know how he had inevitably reached that conclusion in the slow quiet hours of that enlightening morning, but he had. And as a result, he was now leading Dib to something that would alter the way the human lived forever.

Stopping in front of his purple front door, Zim pretended to cast a suspicious glance over his shoulder before ducking inside. Deliberately leaving the door unlocked, he walked stiff-leggedly towards the concealed elevator that would take him downstairs and pulled off his disguise in relief.

Now all that was left to do was lie in wait like a spider biding its time while the fly buzzed ever-closer.

"I could wait until night time… but man, I'd really be sitting here for a long time if I did." Dib thought logically, eyes peeking out through the bushes in Zim's neighbor's yard. "Maybe, if I hopped the fence and stayed out of those stupid gnomes' lines of sight, I could slip around to the front door or try the windows." Conjecturing all the different ways to break into his enemy's base, Dib eventually shrugged and leapt over the small white picket fence. Nine times out of ten he successfully made it inside without a hitch, and he hoped today would be one of those lucky days.

Trying the door handle with a certainty that it wouldn't turn, Dib was pleased to find the knob slid to the side with the movement of his wrist and the door swing open to let him through. Quietly shutting it behind him so the house's proximity alarms wouldn't go off, Dib considered the best point of entry to take. Zim seemed to most often use the desk, toilet, and trashcan entrances to his lower base but Dib knew of the couch elevator as well. Walking over to it, he prodded around a little for a button or switch to reveal the secret platform before smacking himself in the forehead. Everything in this house was computerized and voice controlled, and Dib stepped back and cleared his throat.

"Uh… computer? Open couch… portal… thing." Dib almost hit himself again- that was the stupidest sounding attempt at an order ever!

"Ugh, fiiiine." A mechanical voice emanating from an indeterminable point groaned, and the couch slid aside to reveal the pink floating disk awaiting its passenger.

"That shouldn't have worked… maybe Zim's technology is on the fritz today." Dib reasoned with himself, offhandedly wondering where Gir was. Usually the excitable little robot would have caught him by now and spent a few minutes hugging his leg, before blasting away somewhere with a "G' bye Mary!"

But all was ominously still within the base, and Dib stepped off the elevator warily when it reached the bottom with a ding. Keeping to the sides of the metal halls in the shadows and walking carefully to minimize the impact his boots made on the floor, he aimlessly skulked through the labyrinth in the hopes of coming across a room of some interest. A computer room would be good, or wherever Zim created or tested his designs for his idiotic plans would be a great find as well. Taking a left down a better lit hall, Dib was unaware of the Irken who watched computer monitors a few rooms over in anticipation and toyed with light settings to make a specific route more desirable to the dark-vision weak human. Guiding the Dib was proving to be easier than he'd thought.

Approaching an inconspicuous enough looking steel door, Dib pressed the button on the wall beside it. He'd have to open a door at some point- why not start with this seemingly unimportant one? The barrier slid open with a "fshhh" of air, and Dib peeked his head in. The room was shrouded in darkness, but the sides were lined with tubes filled with glowing liquid. At the far end in the center a tube contained a squid in suspended animation, and Dib's curiosity took over as he put a wondering hand to his mouth and crept closer.

Zim watched the human approach his bait, hands wringing anxiously. Just a few more steps…

Dib stopped a safe distance from the glass, observing the motionless cephalopod. It was an average enough purple-ish squid, a few orange spots here and there giving it a pleasant coloration. Its tentacles splayed throughout the liquid were poised evenly, and the status panel below the tube showed the animal to be alive and healthy. Satisfied with the unimportant (but still kinda neat) discovery, Dib turned to leave the room in search of more relevant information to the Irken's plot.

A few rooms away, Zim frantically keyed a command into his computer.

A twitching motion caught Dib's eye at the last second, and the human jerked his attention back to the animal. Had it just moved? Another slow twitch confirmed this, and Dib watched in amazement as slowly the squid opened its large brown glassy eyes and flailed its limbs a little, not seeming bothered by the fact it was "swimming" in who-knew-what sort of substance. Stepping closer and placing his hands delicately on the glass, Dib grinned as the creature blinked at him and stuck a tentacle of its own on the glass opposite the human.

Zim silently cheered. The unfailing characteristics of curiosity and inquiry Dib never ceased to display had worked like a charm in luring the human those last few steps. Slamming his fist down on a large red button triumphantly, he jumped out of his chair and darted through a few tunnels, skidding to a halt outside the same door Dib had gone through.

Only now, instead of quiet silence and a dim atmosphere, Dib was yelling obstinately and the lights had flickered up a few notches. Strolling through the door, Zim stopped and clasped his hands behind his back as Dib's eyes locked onto him and narrowed.

"You'd better let me go, Zim! I… people know I'm here! They'll come looking!" Dib frantically proclaimed, pulling against the restraints that held him suspended in the air. He'd been so caught off guard he hadn't even registered the need to scream until it was too late- restraints from the ceiling locked around his wrists, and an adjacent pair from the floor clasped shut around his ankles. The assembly had then extended up a few feet, leaving Dib splayed out midair like a frog pinned to a dissection board with his vulnerable middle exposed.

All in all, it was the worst form of capture he'd experienced by Zim yet. Most times it was a cage or a room- this crossed the unspoken line they both silently adhered to on a day to day basis while fighting.

Zim moved an antenna up and down briefly, but otherwise gave no reaction. "Oh, I'll have you home soon enough. However…" He trailed off, an unreadable expression settling over his features.

Dib gulped. "However…?" He picked up the sentence carefully, letting the end of the word slide off questioningly.

"However, I have a few things to attend to. Things that involve you, more accurately." Zim clarified, unclasping his hands from behind him as he began typing something in on a pedestal-like keyboard that rose up from a hole in the floor. Intent red stare diverted from Dib to the miniature keyboard, the human took the opportunity to frantically look around the room, at his restraints, everywhere.

Had Zim finally decided to overstep that boundary between them and do away with Dib once and for all? Had he grown tired of the games the two of them played and, in seeking to more efficiently destroy the Earth, realized eradicating Dib was a necessary mean to an end? Panicking, Dib felt the adrenaline running through his system and strained against the metal restraints for all he was worth. He couldn't die like this right now! He still had to catch Bigfoot!

"Human… remember when I asked you how hard your spine was?" Zim's calm voice served only to heighten Dib's alarm, and the Irken continued on despite only the sound of Dib's rapid breathing filling the room. "I think you may want to try not to bite your tongue while this is going on."

Dib's hands were released just long enough for his trench coat and shirt to be stripped off him by a pair of metal hands reaching down through the ceiling before the restraints recaptured him.

Dib froze as the cold air of the base settled over his body. While what was going on? Why would he need to worry about-

"Bzzzzzrrr!"

The blinding, burning pain stole the breath from his lungs and made him try to instinctively curl in on himself. It felt like someone was stabbing him in the back in two distinct places, burrowing the knife ever-deeper as Dib cried out in agony. He was only distantly aware of a mechanical drilling sort of noise and a cracking sound that he instinctively knew was his spine. An electrical shock lanced through his every nerve ending, and he only just bit back the scream that fought to burst out as he felt a crawling, tendril-y feeling snake up and down his spine from the inside. What… what was Zim doing to him!?

As quickly as it had begun, all noise ceased and the pain stopped increasing. A throbbing ache pulsed through him with every heartbeat, and Dib flickered in and out of consciousness as he barely registered a cold metal feeling against his back and a few extra pounds dragging on his spine.

He saw Zim stride up out of his periphery, and if he wasn't so drunk on pain he could have sworn the alien seemed regretful of the situation. As though listening underwater, Dib heard only snatches of what the Irken was saying.

"…-omputer…Integration status repor…" "Good. Load him…Voot crui…"

Another quick twinge of pain was felt in Dib's arm that he dully recognized as an injection, and the world swam away into darkness with only a short quietly spoken phrase by Zim to see him off:

"Welcome to life, Irken hybrid Dib."

Please review, guys! I'm really excited about this story, and I want to know how I did on the first chapter. Even a "YAY!" or something makes me smile. Share your thoughts, I'd really love to hear them! Us authors enjoy nothing more than seeing people chime in and say stuff about our stories, so let me know what ya' think! :D