Zim stared into the abyss from his home. He grinned with victory as he thought how soon it would be that the filthy Earth he was sent to conquer be under his grasp. He had finally found the ultimate way to take over the world. He was done being ‘nice and normal’ among the filthy human he had come to hate ever since the day he arrived to this planet. He was sent on a special mission by The Tallests and he was bent on finishing the job to prove that he is the real invader his fellow Irkens have doubting for so long.
He had it all worked out—he will take over each government of the country there is on Earth using the Cold Nuke Bomb he had gotten from the planet Pluto (a whole race of aliens with cold blood running through their veins, and I mean cold as in below 20 degrees). He had done enough research and had analyzed the domains of the leaders in each government to be able to tackle them if they so ever put up a small fight. He will first settle with a small negotiation and if it didn’t work, he will use the Cold Nuke Bomb to freeze their nerves and nuke them down to oblivion. Then he will start dominating the world by storm, and his first target would be the most hated Dib. He chuckled to himself as he walked towards the Cold Nuke Bomb which was tucked snugly in his icy cold storage. Always keep it below 100 degrees, as the Plutonium aliens said.
As he stroked the cold storage in earnest, he whispered, “Sleep well, you filthy human scums, for this few nights will be the last peaceful nights you’ll ever have a goodnight’s sleep.”
“Today’s horrible lesson will be the horrible diseases of this horrible world. Everyone turn to Chapter 69 on Page 203.”
Everyone did as Ms. Bitters ordered. Zim did the same. The students were quite afraid of the old hag’s temper and Zim had the same share of fearing her, but not for long. He was grinning from ear to ear at the thought of not going to listen to anymore ridiculous, ludicrous orders from this old spinster once he had his hands on the planet. He didn’t pay attention to anything that Ms. Bitters was teaching. He didn’t think he needed it anyway. But he had his eyes on her, just in case she caught him dwindling his mind in another world.
The only human who was also not paying attention to Ms. Bitters’ lesson was our resident smarty Dib. He had always suspected Zim to be someone from another planet trying to take over the Earth (how right he was) and he had been obsessed with him since. Never a day goes by without having to worry when this Irken was about to strike or do something treacherous to the planet Earth and its citizens. He was always trying to find proof that Zim was actually an alien and convince people that Zim was out to get them but no one seemed to care. In fact, even his own sister Gaz, who also share the knowledge about Zim being an alien, didn’t bother to help him out. She practically didn’t care anyway. The world was a piece of crap to her, for all she knew. He couldn’t believe that people can be so ignorant.
He had been noticing Zim grinning from ear to ear ever since he came into class. He glared at him with a vengeance and contempt only he could feel for a mortal enemy. His grin seemed triumphant, gleeful and full of malice and evil. ‘He had to have something up his sleeve,’ Dib thought. ‘He had to be! Or else he wouldn’t be so happy about it…’
“DIB!!” Ms. Bitters’ snarl snapped him back to reality. The skinny, almost boneless spinster was towering over him like the Eiffel Tower, threatening to grind him into fine powder with her balled fists. Dib shrank at the sight of her.
“I suppose you can explain to the class why you are not paying attention to my teachings. I intend to let everyone suffer and no one, I mean no one, is excluded!”
Dib could hear her grinding her teeth madly as the whole class turned to look at him. He felt slightly embarrassed. He stole a glance at Zim and he could see that he was utterly pretending to pay attention to class and the Irken was smirking from head to toe when Ms. Bitters caught Dib in the act. Dib knew that his explanation was not going to help his situation, so he just gave a simple excuse, “I had my mind on other things. Sorry.”
“Obviously, whatever is on your mind is none of my concern. Well, sorry is not going to excuse you from having 3 hours of detention today after school,” Ms. Bitters hissed like a snake before she went back to her seat and continued droning on her teaching. Dib glared at Zim who turned his gaze back to Ms. Bitters, his eyes faking his interest on the subject of Ebola in Africa. He balled his hands into fists and was in the verge of cracking as he thought about becoming a fool in front of his worst enemy.
The school bell rang a few minutes later. Ms. Bitters need not to shoo the students out; they eagerly ran out of the class and out into the open road. Dib was reminded by the old spinster to head straight to the detention room and spend 3 hours of total boredom. He sighed in defeat and got off his seat. As he walked out of the class, he stopped right in front of Zim’s desk and hissed, “Don’t think that you have won, Zim. I got my eyes on you, and I know you’re plotting to do something ferociously horrible to this planet.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Dib,” Zim said with fake innocent eyes as he got off his seat and walked out of the class. Dib immediately grabbed Zim in the collar and slammed him onto the lockers.
“Don’t play dumb with me, Zim! Anyone who is obsessed with you would notice that you’ve been smirking and abnormally happy all day and it was obvious that you are plotting something evil! You tell me right now, or I’ll…”
“You’ll what, Dib-worm? Kill me?” Zim narrowed his eyes near to slits as he glared back at Dib in triumph and glee. “Do you want to be the first child to ever be convicted of murdering an innocent child just because he looked different due to his ‘skin condition’? I wouldn’t want that to happen.”
“Tell me what you have in mind this time. Have you planted a virus into me? Have you found a way to hypnotize all the kids in the world to follow your diabolical plans? Have you found a way to infiltrate my father or my lab so that you take away all our secret formulas and gadgets?”
“Please,” Zim said coolly as he took Dib’s hands off his collar. “Those things are much too simple for the likes of me, Zim the Irken Invader. I have something better up my sleeves and I’m not going to tell you. You just wait, Dib-human, for you will be the first in line for me to torture.”
“Oh yeah? We’ll see about that!” Dib hissed before letting him go and heading for the detention room. Zim chuckled and skipped gaily back to his home, where his faithful simpleton GIR waited for him.
“Earth to Irken! Invader Zim reporting for The Tallests!”
Zim was trying to get online in contact with Red and Purple, The Tallests in the Irken nation. He had to make the announcement of his coming invasion on the planet Earth. He couldn’t wait to see the surprised faces on The Tallests once he announced his plans and his incoming victory.
“Yes, Zim. We hear you loud and clear,” Red’s face came in view through the screen monitor, his voice sounded tired. Who wouldn’t when the message comes from the most failed Irken in the entire universe?
“Sir, my most respected Tallests, I have called to send in an important message.”
“Well, every message you send is important to you!” Purple sneered as his face came near the screen beside Red. “What seems to be the problem this time, Zim? Another attack of this meat-thing you call baloney?”
“No, Tallest Red. It is not why I called. I called to announce that I have finally found the perfect tool to conquer this filthy planet I’m in,” Zim said proudly, “and I will assure you that Earth will be in my grasp in no time.”
“Where did I hear that before?” Purple muttered sarcastically. Zim glared at Purple.
“This time I am sure I will invade this planet! I will make you proud and prove to you that I am worthy of an Invader! I’m sure I will succeed this time!”
“Yes, yes, yes, I’m sure you do,” Red replied, massaging his temples tiredly. He shifted his gaze at Purple, as if signaling him to say something. Purple caught that look and turned to face Zim.
“But there is only one teensy-weensy problem here.”
“What is it?” Zim asked worriedly. “What seems to be the problem? Tell me and I will correct that wrong…”
“You’re not an Invader.” Red said, his face showing relief that he had finally got a lead off his chest.
Zim was dumbstruck for a few minutes there. The message was clear to his head but his egoistic brain automatically turned into a state of denial. He knocked himself back to his senses and said, “I’m sorry, I just hallucinated. What was that again?”
“You are not an Invader,” Purple said with a sneer. “You never were and you never will be.”
“How…How can this be?! Me, Zim, not an Invader?! There must be some kind of mistake, I…”
“Zim, remember the damages you have caused throughout your life here in Irken?” Red asked as he shuddered at the thought. “You have brought nothing but havoc in this planet Irk and you have disrupted and mangled almost everything in your path. You have already been blacklisted since the day you were taken out of your cell and you stuffed the Irken after you back into his own cell, causing that massive power failure. After Doomsday, your name has already been crossed out and bunked off from the list of Invader training and we were only too glad to banish you to Foodcourtia for the sake of Irk!”
“You were never Invader material,” Purple chided in. “You’re more like demented Destroyer material! A walking disaster! A germ that just won’t go away! We should’ve eliminated your pack after that first chaos you caused, but we were foolish to believe that you would be able to change once you’ve grown taller.”
“But…But…I don’t understand! If I’m not an Invader, why would you want to send me to invade Earth?” Zim was still unable to take the news. “Why did you shipped me here into this planet and give the advanced version of SIR if you didn’t want me to invade and conquer it?!”
“Dear Zim. Dear sweet Zim,” Red’s tone seemed as if Zim was just a mere newborn. “I cannot believe you would still hang on to those lies for so long. We sent you to Earth to get RID of you! We wanted to erase you out of existence so that you would never bring another calamity into our planet again. We never wanted you to invade Earth. We didn’t even know it exists until you made your first contact. And haven’t you noticed that your GIR was of obsolete design? It has always been stupid, you idiot! It was made of scrap! Nothing but filthy scrap! Fit just for you, dear Zim!”
“But I…I can’t be…” Zim was at lost of words.
“Frankly, Zim, we were hoping that you would even die on the way to this planet Earth of yours,” Purple said with a yawn, as if Zim was nothing but a tragic insult of life. “No one cares about you in Irk anymore, Zim. They will never remember you. Your existence has been totally cleared, wiped out, deleted, erased! There is not a single file that said you were ever being born in Irk. As far as I’m concern, you don’t even exist anymore.”
“Now stop transmitting to us anymore! You are a nuisance and a bag of crap! Good riddance to bad rubbish!” Red yelled as he cut off the transmission, leaving the screen blank.
Zim slumped in his seat. Not an Invader? Not an Invader? He never was an Invader at all, and he had forced himself to believe that he was worthy to be one. He kept telling himself that he would show all his fellow Irkens one day that he will conquer a planet and be the best Invader in all Irk, yet he had no idea that his fellow Irkens were right about not being one. He had been living in lies, all lies. Those lies that kept him going for his ultimate dream for so many, many long years. And GIR was never advanced. He was just a plain, stupid obsolete version of SIR.
Slowly, his body slightly trembling, he walked towards his icy cold storage. He took out two pieces of the tablet-sized Cold Nuke Bomb and slipped it into his mini-launcher after setting certain coordinates on the bomb. He then clicked the bearings and altitude of Planet Irk and opened the roof of his human home. He didn’t bother for discretion; nothing began to matter anymore to him.
He stared venomously at the launcher as it launched its way to the horizon towards Planet Irk.
Dib noticed Zim downcast for the whole day. He smirked. Whatever he was planning to do to the Earth, it seemed like it had backfired at him. He stared for a few victorious minutes at Zim before the old spinster came gliding into class and started her ‘horrible’ lessons (‘Horrible’ would be an understatement).
During recess, as usual, Zim was staring at his cafeteria food of baked beans, carrot soup and mashed potatoes. But this time he wasn’t staring at it in disgust and contempt like he used to. His face was of a dazed look, like all his happiness has been sapped away from his heart, and that all his enthusiasm to invade this planet had gone to dust. Nothing seemed to interest him anymore, and neither did anything disgust him anymore. He suddenly turned into someone that had gone numb towards his surroundings.
“Well, Zim, looks like whatever you had in mind for my planet has disappeared into oblivion.”
Zim sighed tiredly and turned towards Dib who was standing beside him with a scorn written all over his face. He had his arms folded and his foot was tapping the floor in a sort of taunting way.
“Go away, Dib-worm. I’m not in a mood for petty arguments now.”
“Oh? And since when do I have to listen to your orders, you pathetic scum-bag? Admit it, Zim! I can see it in your eyes! Your plans didn’t work out, did it? You failed in another of your attempt to take over this planet, haven’t you?”
Without warning, Zim pounced onto Dib and both of them slammed onto the grimy floor. They both struggled and rolled all over the floor until their bodies were covered with the dirt and grime and the scraps of food from the floor. When they finally stopped, Zim was on top of Dib, panting heavily, his eyes glazed and glaringly mad.
“Listen here, you filthy scum!” Zim hissed through clenched teeth. “I am in a very, very bad mood right now. I had a hard day and I am so not into wasting my precious saliva on the likes of you! So, if you don’t mind, just LEAVE ME ALONE!!!”
With that, he harshly let go of Dib’s collar and got off him, walking quickly out of the cafeteria, a furious aura lingering around him. Gaz saw everything while she was playing her Gameslave between mouthfuls of food, walked over towards his brother, paused her game and helped him up.
“You know, there is never a day gone by without you starting some silly fight with that Zim guy. When will you ever let it go, Dib? You are hopeless, you know that?”
“You’ll never understand, Gaz,” Dib said as he tried to swipe away the dirt off his billowing black coat. “He is a threat to mankind and I have to stop him from trying to harm this planet. If I don’t, everyone will be sorry that they have never listened to me in the first place once Zim got his way!”
Gaz sighed and went on with her game. Dib twisted his face in disgust at the half-eaten sandwich on the back of his coat. He would never get rid of at this rate. He had to do it in the toilet. Before he stepped out of the cafeteria, Gaz’s voice suddenly appeared out of the blue.
“Did you realize that your face and Zim’s were so close that your lips were in the verge of touching?”
Zim sat alone in front of the icy cold storage, staring at the Cold Nuke Bombs he had acquired from Planet Pluto. It cost him a sum, what with the exchange rate between planets and he had to risk himself working at McMeaty’s so that he could earn enough cash just to afford all those Bombs. Humiliation was inevitable when he was caught by Dib while he was working on the French fries section.
But now all his hard work has gone to waste. He had lost all his reasons to carry on with his mission. He began to contemplate his existence in this world. If he wasn’t meant to invade, what was he meant to do? If he wasn’t an Invader, who was he? If he had caused so much damage since the day he was born, why the heck was he ever born anyway? If everything he had fought for and lived in was a lie, then what was the truth? That he was going to spend his blind eternity in this filthy planet and rue the day he had ever left Foodcourtia to pursue his so-called life-long dream? This wasn’t a dream. This was a nightmare! A nightmare he somehow found it hard to get out. A nightmare that shows what the truth of his dreaded existence is all about.
As he laid his hand on the door of the icy cold storage, he felt a presence in his secret lair. He spun round and saw that it was Dib, clad as usual in his nifty spy clothes standing right a few feet in front of Zim, his eyes glaring accusingly at Zim.
“Oh, it’s you, Dib-worm,” Zim said uninterestedly, taking Dib by surprise.
“Aren’t you going to use your gadgets to capture me or something? Aren’t you going to stuff me into a chamber and experiment on me for your own pleasure?”
“What makes you think that interests me anymore?” Zim asked tiredly, his hands opening the door of the storage, clouds upon clouds of mists emitting out of it.
“Don’t play dumb with me!” Dib yelled exasperatedly, stomping his foot hard on the floor. “I can see what you’re doing right now!! You’re trying to use that weird cold gadget thing to freeze the whole world and turn it back into the Ice Age! And then you’re going to monopolize the heat resources and threaten mankind to bow down to you before you hand them out the heat resource! Am I right?! I knew you’re going to do it! Admit it!!”
“What if I told you that I’m doing this because my sole target was on you?”
“Huh?” Dib was confused yet again.
“Yeah, I have been thinking of taking over this planet a number of times. Not a day goes by without me thinking that someday you puny humans will fall down and be at my grasp,” Zim finally started to open up to Dib like he had never did before.
“Hah! I knew it! I knew it all along ever since the day I laid eyes on you!! You think you’re so smart, but I got you figured out all by myself!” Dib shouted in victory, pointing an accusing finger at the Irken he had come to hate.
“Taking over this planet has been my sole priority,” Zim said as he did a sort-of coin roll with the tablet-sized Cold Nuke Bomb and walked closer towards the apprehensive Dib. “I dreamed of proving myself to my fellow Irkens that I am the world’s greatest Invader that had ever lived. Everyone has been sent out to great planets and made it their conquered home, and I have always longed to be this way. That is, until I met you.”
“M…Me? What about me?” Dib laughed nervously.
“As soon as I laid eyes on you, I began to sway. I didn’t know what I am supposed to do: spare this filthy planet and go back to my own planet or stay and continue with my ambition to prove myself. My ambition got the better of me. I slaved day and night just to get the money to get these little babies. I plan to conquer the world, prove my worthiness to my fellow Irkens and then force you to become mine for all eternity. But then I found out the truth about my identity.”
“Your identity? What identity?”
“That I’m not exactly an Invader. Never was, never am, never will be. I never existed in my planet anymore. I was erased out of existence. To them, I was never born.”
Dib was about to laugh, scorn and taunt him because of his pathetic failure. He had always known that Zim would never succeed in his missions, but he kept guard just in case. Now that he knew the truth, he felt so relieved that he was able to laugh at him without worrying about being backfired, but when he saw the look on defeat and acceptance of his fate on Zim’s face, somehow his laughter was swallowed back. He didn’t understand why.
“I know, I’m a failure,” Zim continued, “and I deserved to be scorn. I’ve been thinking a great deal for the whole of last night and all day today, and I finally come to realize that I never wanted to invade this planet at all. I have got so accustomed to this filthy planet that I lost all contempt towards this planet. And I owed it to someone who had showed me how beautiful this place could be if I were just to accept it and forget about my plans.”
Dib didn’t dare to think who the one to make him realize that was.
“Dib,” Zim was standing face to face with Dib and was actually calling him by his name. “I release your planet. Your planet is free.”
“Zim…” Dib was at lost of words. He had never seen this side of Zim before.
“I love you,” Zim said as he placed the bomb into Dib’s hand. He leaned closer and kissed the human’s lips, savouring every inch of his mouth, inside and out. He finally did it. He had finally realized his true purpose in this planet, and he had finally told his secretly beloved Dib all he needed to know. He could feel Dib trying to resist his kiss. He whispered between kisses, pleading, “Please, just pretend to be mine. Just this once, let us forget our differences, please.”
Dib had never heard Zim beg before and soon he found himself going with the flow, kissing him back slowly, then a little bit vigorously and hungrily. He didn’t think that Zim’s worm-like tongue could feel so good on his own. He felt his hand that held the weird-looking contraption being guided by Zim’s grasp onto his bulged back. He heard a tiny click and a small hiss and that was when Zim finally tore himself away from Dib. He stared in horror as Zim’s Pak began to freeze and harden and his veins began to pulse and show, going blue all over. His wig and lenses that disguised him as a human began to slip off his head, like it had suddenly become too big for him. He fell onto his knees and slowly crumpled to the solid floor, his body curled up into a ball.
But that wasn’t what disturbed Dib.
What disturbed him was that throughout this sudden transformation, Zim had a smile on his face all the time.
“I…love…you…”
That was the last thing Dib heard before the Irken’s whole body became hard and frozen, his smile stuck permanently on his ashen, frozen face. The whole place became so silent as death swept coldly across the secret lab of Zim. Dib stared and stared at Zim’s dead body, not knowing what to do. In a way, he had finally destroyed the Irken Invader that had come to this planet unannounced and plot to conquer it. But, deep down inside his heart, he knew he wasn’t at all happy about it. Not happy at all.
Because at that very split second Zim breathed his last, Dib had finally and actually fallen in love with him.
Dib fell onto his knees and held the frozen Zim in his arms. How could he have ever dismissed the fact that he had actually been suppressing a crush so deep for this Irken Invader for so long? How could he ever have dismissed the fact that Zim’s depression over the news that he wasn’t a true Invader was enough to crush his own will to live? How could he have not seen that the words that Zim had confessed to him were the last words he would ever hear from him? How could he be so blind not to see that with this weird gadget, he was both diminishing his will to live and giving the opportunity to Dib to kill him? How could he be…?
Sobs could be heard throughout the empty lab…
“Aww~! How cute~!”
GIR accessed his way down into the underground lab, trying to look for his master as he was getting late for school. When he got down to the lab, there he was, sleeping beside Dib soundly, like they were having a nice dream and they just don’t want to get up. He hobbled over towards them, toppling over cords and wires on the way.
“Wake up, Zim! Wake up, Dib! Wakey, wakey, time to go to school!”
The two boys didn’t budge. GIR could feel their bodies cold and frozen and they were not moving. Their eyes were quite open—one revealing his purple eyes and the other revealing his blue eyes that hide behind those large glasses. Zim had a small smile on his face and Dib’s mouth was slightly open, as if wanting to say something but didn’t make it out. GIR noticed that there were tablet-like gadgets stuck on both Zim’s Pak and Dib’s neck. He also noticed that Dib’s hand was locked onto Zim’s three-clawed hand in a tight, firm grip. He tried to shake them awake. They still won’t budge.
“Wake up, Zim, Dib. Wakey, wakey! Zim? Dib…? Wake up…”
