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Finale	By : Spacefille Category: +G through L > Invader Zim > AU/AR-Alternate Universe-Alternate Reality Views: 5244 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Invader Zim, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
- 3
Author's Note: The counselor's name, Ms. England, is borrowed from Squee. She is not necessarily the same character I just needed a name... :)
~~~
Chapter 2
~~~

That day at school was especially difficult for Dib. First class he had was English. Instead of actually participating in the discussion on... Shakespeare or someone like that, he spent the entire class drawing a picture of Zim. It was Zim bound and on an autopsy table with his innards hanging out. He had drawn several pictures like that back in elementary school, and he figured that he could do it again... especially since his once fantasy was soon going to become a reality.
For some reason this time was different. When he was done, the picture just left him with a bad taste in the back of his mouth. He stared at the picture for the remainder of class, studying it carefully. When class was over Dib looked at his picture one last time, swallowed, then crumpled the picture up and tossed it in the waste paper basket.
'Damn,' He thought to himself as he walked out of that class.
He spent the entire day distracted and unable to concentrate... except for science class which he fell asleep in... purely due to exhaustion on his part. He hadn't slept at all the night before after all...
His sister ignored him at lunch, choosing as she usually did to play a game instead of being social. That was fine by Dib. He picked at his food, unable to eat thanks to an odd sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, and completely lost in his thoughts.
Last class of the day was physical education... for everyone but him. Instead he had to go talk to the school counselor. Ever since elementary school the teachers had assumed Dib was a bit nuts, and the fact that he had no friends in middle school apparently indicated to them that he was in need of serious mental help.
Dib sighed. He sat there again, face to face with Ms. England, the school's counselor, as she droned on and asked him, yet again, more than enough inappropriate questions about his personal life. He tuned her out and replied the way he usually did... with vague "naw"s and "yeah"s and "maybe"s. At the same time his mind went over the whole entire incident with Zim. Again. He thought about his capture of the little alien. And the fact that he still had the little Irken Invader in his basement right now...
He frowned very slightly. Come to think of it, Zim hadn't been in true form last night. He may have been scared, yes, but Zim usually was much much more... insane and ranty than that. Something was... different. Like when he had first broken into the Invader's base. Dib probably wouldn't have been able hit him in the first place if the Invader hadn't appeared to be running away from him.
That made no sense. Dib shook his head ever so slightly. Zim always confronted him with rants and met his attacks dead on. (Unless, of course, they involved water, in which case he ran screaming.)
Not only that, whenever he thought about doing anything even vaguely close to continuing to experiment on the little alien, the sick feeling in his stomach got worse. He found that to be the strangest thing of all... a year or so ago he would have had been fine with the thought of cutting Zim open and doing anything to his insides. He would have awaited the chance eagerly! He should be excited. Like he was right up until the time he tied up his little Irken on the autopsy table. What on EARTH had happened in the mean time? Nerves? Conscience?
He didn't know...
Dib tuned back into the counselor just in time to catch the tale end of a question.
"... upset over the death of your friend?" Ms. England was saying.
He looked up quickly, startled. "What?" He asked her, paling ever so slightly.
"Your friend." Ms. England quickly shuffled through the papers in front of her. "Um, Zim I believe his name was..."
Dib just stared at her. "Zim... isn't dead." He replied.
Ms. England blinked, looking startled herself. "Oh!" She replied. She went shuffling through her papers again, searching for something. "But his file says..."
"I thought he moved away." Dib interrupted her.
"He did..." Ms. England dropped the files and folded her hands in front of her. "Of course. Well then Dib," She said, smiling winning at the boy. "Are you upset over the fact that your friend moved away?" The look on her face turned to one of immense concern.
Dib stared at the counselor. He raised one eyebrow and blinked, then shook his head ever so slightly.
"I'm going now." He said very deliberately, getting up from his chair.
"Wait! So soon Dib? It's not the end of your class yet." Ms. England replied. She indicated to his vacated chair. "Do you want to talk about it?" She asked kindly.
Dib shook his head 'no', schooling an irritated look. "I'm done talking to you." He replied honestly. With that he turned and left the room, shutting the door deliberately behind him as he went.

He usually waited for his sister to walk home with him, but not today. Today he had more important things to do. Or rather one very important thing to do.
That was to let Zim go. He couldn't do it.
He laughed at himself as he half-walked half-ran towards his house. His voice was caught in the wind and ripped from him and it only made him laugh harder. He was such a nut. Ms. England would certainly declare him insane and send him off to a mental institution if she only knew what he was about to do.
He was going to let the alien go. After years of hunting him, after years of threats, pain and tears he was actually going to let the alien go.
He WAS insane. But not for the reasons they thought, goodness no...

He barely noticed his sister as he ran past the kitchen and took the stairs down two at a time. He jogged through his Dad's lab, grateful that his father was at work, and came to the door to his own lab.
Dib stopped short.
The door was slightly ajar.
His blood suddenly ran chill. Dib reached out and pushed the door the rest of the way open, then stepped inside. "Hello?" He called out cautiously.
There was no answer. Frowning, he flicked on the light switch, blinking as the banks of fluorescent lights flickered to life.
Nothing. Nothing was out of place, and everything was as neat and orderly and in the way he had left it when he left for school. Except for one little detail...
Zim was gone. The bed was empty, the restraints untied and the cover thrown back to indicate a body had climbed out, or had been helped out, from underneath them.
Dib stared, his mouth hanging open. After several moments his mind processed that and he shut his mouth and swallowed, then frowned again. There was only one explanation for the disappearance of Zim, and the fact that his lab was left untouched in the process.
Gaz. Gaz wouldn't care enough to destroy his stuff. Zim would. Obviously his sister had just broken in here to get one thing and one thing only-- that being Zim.
She had done it for him. Let Zim go. He didn't know whether to be happy or angry with her.
He decided on something inbetween the two. What was done was done, but he could at least be a little bit irked. He took the stairs slowly back up to the kitchen, to where his sister sat on the countertop, eating what looked like toast.
He stood in the doorway of the kitchen with his hands folded across his chest, glaring.
Gaz ignored him and continued eating her toast. After a moment or so of being glared at she gave him the middle finger and kept on munching away.
'See? That's what I get for being a good older brother to Gaz all these years,' Dib thought sourly. 'She goes and lets my alien escape...' It was more than that though... the moment his sister hit puberty something horrible had come over her, turning her from a grumpy kid who didn't care about any thing, to a grumpy offensive kid who still didn't care... about most things. Unless, of course, they benefited her in some way. Which lead him to his next question. "What did he give you for his escape?" Dib asked, a touch of dry sarcasm in his voice.
Gaz hopped down from the counter and made her way across the room to the fridge. "Like I'd tell you," She replied obnoxiously.
  Dib shrugged and let out a self suffering sigh. If she wasn't going to tell him, no amount of whining on his behalf was going to get his answers for him. So he changed the subject. "Gaz? Did you skip out of last class again?" He asked, walking towards her. He knew that Gaz would have had to skip out of class to come free Zim... and it wasn't like she hadn't done it before. Last class for Gaz this year was English, and despite being one of those girls that spent a good deal of time reading books (when she wasn't playing video games), she wasn't the best at expressing herself when it came to the written word...
Gaz emerged from the fridge again with can of cola. "So what if I did?" She grunted, slamming the fridge door shut behind her.
Dib sighed and jerked the fridge door open himself, extracting a can of cola as well. "You know what Dad says Gaz," he replied. He cleared his throat and thrust his finger in the air and mimicked their father. "'An educated adult is a happy adult...'"
Gaz raised one eyebrow then snorted in disgust. "Well I'm not *going* to be a happy adult, now am I?" She returned snarkily. She turned away. "Don't do that again. You look like an idiot."
Sighing loudly, Dib lowered his hand. He glared, and his eyes narrowed at the back of his sister's head. Then he rolled his eyes heavenward and shrugged upwards briefly, took a swing of his cola and casually turned to leave the kitchen.
He wanted to survey the lab. If Gaz really had left everything untouched, he should still have some Irken blood and skin samples to play with. Maybe he could even go back to Zim's base and see if there was any chance of him getting back in there again... wait! He stopped his train of thought quickly. 'No. No more capturing Zim. I'll analyze the blood. Find out what's wrong with it. Yeah, that's what I'll do...' he continued to think to himself as he walked away.
He made it as far as the top of the basement stairs.
"Oh yeah and Dib?" Gaz called out after him from the kitchen.
Dib started. Then -- "What?" He replied and paused.
"Not that you'd care or anything," Gaz said scornfully. "But I think he's sick."
It took Dib a moment to realize that Gaz didn't mean sick as in twisted sick or insane sick, but rather physically ill. Dib blinked. Well that was interesting... but Gaz was right. "You're right," He called back at her just as snidely. "I don't care."
~~~
Well... that was a bit of a lie. He sort of cared.
After checking his lab and discovering the skin and blood samples were indeed where he left them, he decided to go off and check on Zim's house. He shouted out Gaz something to the effect of "I'm going to the store!" (He got a snort and a "Suuuuuurrree," in reply) and left.
He could see that Zim's base was still standing and was still eerily lighting the night, even from a block and a half away. He walked up to it anyway, pausing in the street a few feet from the front fence. Everything seemed to be in order. The gnomes had self repaired again. The lights were on, save for the attic light. Figures and shadowed light danced across the one wall he could see inside the crooked window, evidence that Gir was faithfully watching TV again. The "I love Earth" flag, which Dib had attempted to dismantle and vandalize on many an occasion still read just that-- "I love Earth."
"Go home Dib," The boy told himself out loud. "There's nothing you can do. NO!" He began to argue with himself. "No. You can't go in there and get him again, you forgot your laptop remember? Not to mention the rest of your equipment..." 'And you won't be able to do it anyway... we've been though this already.' He thought to himself. "Okay?" He replied out loud.
Dib turned away and began to trudge back towards home again, but not before he paused momentarily. "I'm talking to myself again, aren't I?" He noted with a sigh. He was, but a quick glance around him told him that no one was out and around to hear him anyway.
Dib had nearly reached home again, and was completely lost in his own mental arguments and thoughts when the strangest thing happened to him. A truck roared towards him, up the road, it's headlights shining brightly on the boy. He looked up and blinked, confused as he raised a hand to shield his eyes.
The truck slowed, but didn't stop. Even so a man with an official looking uniform on and a cap plopped down over short-cropped hair stuck his head out of the window.
"Go home kid!" The man yelled. "It isn't safe for you to be out this time of night alone!" He then stuck his head back into the cab and the truck roared off, continuing on down the road.
Dib turned and stared after it, utterly dumbfounded for a minute. "Now I wonder who that could have been...?" He said out loud. After a moment of puzzlement he shrugged and continued walking on towards home. He had more important things to worry about....

After several hours of peering through the eye piece of his microscope Dib sat back, taking off his glasses and rubbing at the bridge of his nose. He felt like a thirty year old man, not a fourteen year old boy.
Something was wrong, of that much Dib was certain. He had run an analysis on the blood sample again and again in the computer, inspecting the anomalies he had found the night before. He had followed it up with manually checking the sample over again and again. He had identified all of the components that would regularly have been found in human blood when he had acquired the first blood sample years ago, but this new sample... there was something different in it. And there was a lot of it. He didn't know what it was, this foreign component in Zim's blood, but it worried him. Especially since it appeared to be... multiplying.
Finally Dib gave up for the night. He hadn't slept in over thirty six hours, save for a nap during class, and it was beginning to wear on him. Slowly he climbed up the stairs to his room and collapsed on his bed. He fell asleep instantly.
~~~
Zim wasn't in school the next day-- not that Dib really expected him to be. Instead he spent the day musing over what could possibly be wrong with the Irken Invader. Gaz had said he was sick. That led him to think that maybe the odd component of Zim's blood was... a virus? Or something. A virus, or some sort of infectious disease may explain why the Irken had decided to stay inside his base for the last couple of weeks. That would also explain why Zim had been yelling at his computer as well the day before last right before Dib had captured him. He remembered the alien's word's suddenly. Hadn't the alien yelled something about reversing something? Reversing what though--?
That night Dib pulled out the blood sample again, as well as took a sample from the refrigerator of both the old sample and the fresh one. The old sample had nothing wrong with it at all, but the fresh one had the same thing Dib had seen all the night before... strange little cells bumping in between the Irken equivalent of true blood cells. Odd. Very odd.
Even odder still was the sample Dib had been analyzing had more of the cells in it than the fresh sample from the refrigerator. Like the cells that came into close contact with warmth or his person multiplied faster or something.
THAT Dib found downright creepy. He finally decided to take a sample of his own blood. If Zim had a virus or something that was causing him to be ill, he was the only person besides Gaz that had been within a couple feet of the Irken in the last few weeks...
He took his own sample and inspected the blood beneath the microscope, twisting the knob carefully to bring the cells into focus. It took him only a couple moments to find what he was looking for. Then his breath caught in his throat and he then drew back in horror. There were tons of them. Between his blood cells as well, the same thing that was present in Zim's blood...
Gulping down fear, Dib cleaned and thoroughly decontaminated his arm, the microscope and surrounding areas, hoping beyond hope that he had merely contaminated his sample. Then he took another blood sample from his arm and stuck it on a sterile slide...
Only to discover the same thing. The foreign whatever it was was there in large quantities, happily multiplying in his blood stream. He had been infected with... something.
But what? And more importantly, he thought as he sat back on his chair. Had GAZ been infected with the alien stuff as well? His eyes widened.
He had to check.
~~~
"Gaz!" Dib hissed. "Gaz!" He shook her shoulder beneath the blanket. "Gaz wake up!"
Gaz groaned and rolled over, then let out a soft growl as she came too. She blinked blearily up at the sight that met her eyes. Dib stood above her, looking like the splitting image of a doctor. He wore a breather, a full labcoat and had gloves on. If it wasn't for the fact that he was still wearing his huge glasses and his dark hair was sticking up in ever single direction possible she would have mistaken him for a stranger and attacked him. As it was the growl she gave when she saw she wasn't alone in the room grew dangerously as she glanced over at her clock.
"Dib!" She said. "It's two thirty in the fucking morning!" She sat up and glowered, even as Dib held up his hands in a placating gesture.
"Remember what Dad said about swearing?" Dib reminded his sister, giving her a cocky half grin she couldn't see because he had a mask on.
"What. Do. You. Want?!" Gaz hissed, raising her fist.
"I need a blood sample," Dib replied quickly, pulling a needle and some tubing out of his lab coat pocket.
"A WHAT?!" Gaz shouted.
"Shhh-!" Dib hissed. "You'll wake up Dad." He sat down on the bed next to his fuming sister. "You were right," He explained in a quiet voice. "Zim is sick. And whatever he's sick with, he's infected me too." He gave Gaz a clinical look. "You came in direct contact with him... I need to know if you're infected or not." He held out his hands towards her arm.
Gaz's eyes narrowed. Finally she let out a little huff of frustration and extended her arm. "You'll pay for this." She grumbled.
Dib only nodded. "As I'll pay for all the other hundred things I do wrong around here, I know," He replied with little self suffering sigh.
~~~
Dib was still in his lab peering into a microscope when Gaz came down stairs to check on him the next day before school.
"How did you sleep?" Dib asked her without even looking up from the microscope.
"Terrible," Was Gaz's reply. "No thanks to you."
Dib only nodded. Finally he pulled away from the microscope and rubbed wearily at an eye. "You're clean," he half mumbled, half yawned.
Gaz raised an eyebrow. Her brother frankly looked terrible. She would have wondered if it was from the whatever it was Zim had infected him with, but she knew it was more than likely because he hadn't slept that night. Again. "And you're not," She returned sharply.
Dib only shrugged and looked down at his hands. A thinking frown developed on his face, as if he was still considering, confused as to why Zim's illness had only infected him. All night he had sat puzzling over that little fact. Zim's sample was full of the virus (and he had decided to call it a virus, at least until he could identify it) as was Dib's sample. But Gaz's sample hadn't had a hint of the odd substance in it at all. Even when he exposed a drop of it to Zim's blood it hadn't reacted at all. Gaz's sample stayed clean.
Gaz snorted softly. "Maybe you'll consider that next time you decide to abduct a sick alien to perform experiments on." She said snidely.
Dib looked up at her. "How did you know he was sick anyway?" He asked her suddenly. "Was he displaying any particular symptoms? Did he tell you he was sick?"
For a moment Gaz glared at her brother and considered not telling him anything. Then she decided that it was probably for the best if she did let him know what little she knew. She sighed. "He just looked tired that's all." She said swiftly. "And worn out. He didn't talk much at all, and he didn't rant at all, thank god, though I thought it was a bit strange for your stupid little friend. He said you hadn't hurt him, so it couldn't have been because of that, so I thought that maybe he wasn't feeling very well." With that she shrugged and turned, making for the door.
"Gaz?" Dib called out after her. Gaz paused.
"Thanks." Dib said.
  Gaz shrugged. She considered, then called back to him. "Are you going to school Dib?" She asked, laying on the sarcasm.
"No." Was the expected response. She heard Dib's chair squeak as he turned back around to his workbench.
'ï¿½No... of course not Gaz. Now I have to stay here and correct my stupidity.ï¿½' Gaz thought at him meanly in her head. She sighed and left the room, tossing her eyes upward as she did so. 'Why did *I* have to be stuck with the neighborhood nutcase for a brother?... Better yet, why did I have to be stuck with the neighborhood nutcases for a *family*?' She growled softly to herself as she walked up the stairs. Her brother was a self proclaimed paranormal investigator who just happened to have an alien for a best friend and wouldn't SHUT UP about it, and last she heard her wacko scientist father was working on some big important secret invention for some underground organization or something stupid like that. Geez! Her family was going to get HER placed in a loony bin some day... purely through association...
~~~
Dib didn't go to school the next day, or the day after that either. He studied the samples he had gotten from Zim every which way he could, searching for the key to the whatever it was that had infected them both. He was having no luck at all.
He did notice something though on the second day though... something almost as creepy as the fact that he was infected as well. The virus was mutating Zim's blood. He didn't know how, exactly, but he noticed that the odd square shaped Irken blood cells were being... attacked by whatever it was. They were changing them into a rounder shape, but beyond that they didn't seem to be harming the cells any...
The only slightly positive thing he found was the fact that it appeared that the level of whatever they were in his own blood had stopped increasing. Not only that, unlike Zim's sample, the virus didn't appear to be attacking his blood cells at all. He kept a constant almost panicked watch on them though, but unlike Zim's sample his samples almost seemed to be slipping into dormancy, the virus ceasing all movement and instead just... sitting there.
As the days went by, he didn't FEEL any different. He actually felt pretty good. Really good actually. He was invigorated, and he paced the house during the long school hours itching for something-- anything to do. Of course the sickness was constantly on his mind, and he was constantly worried that he was going to infect other people, but it seemed that no one else was getting sick because if this. Whatever it was anyway. He was concerned about the mutation thing he had noticed happening to Zim's blood.
"He may be dead right now for all you know," He told himself one afternoon while taking a break from analyzing. He was lying on the roof sipping coffee and staring at the clouds. He stared at the clouds longer as he turned that statement over and over again in his mind. "He may very well be dead..."
Year 1, Week 2 -
That night he was within an inch of marching to Zim's house and demanding to know what the blood aliment was, when Gir, of all things, came to him.
Of course a little robot dressed up as a dog was the last thing anyone expected to find on the front porch of their house, but Gaz took it well. At least as well as could be expected from Gaz. As she looked down at the 'dog', Gir unzipped his front, jumped out of his doggy suit and grinned up at her.
Gaz growled back. She hated that robot. Zim she could take, in small doses of stupidity, but that robot... he set her teeth on edge... literally.
"Is masta Dib there?" Gir asked with a bit of an accent, still grinning.
The growl grew and Gaz nashed her teeth. Finally she turned away from the door and called into the house. "Dib! The doors for you!" She yelled as she marched away.

Dib was surprised as well when he saw the dog robot thing, and even more surprised when the robot launched himself at him and grabbed onto his pant leg.
"Please come help the master," The robot howled. "You must come help! You're the only one who can and the master has been ignoring me and he won't take me out any more and only you can fix him pleasemasterplease??" His voice hit an impossible pitch on the last word.
A cupboard slammed in the kitchen. "Dib! Get that *thing* out of this house!" Gaz yelled at him from the other room.
"I-- hey!" Dib did a little dance, trying to remove the robot from his leg by jiggling it. No go, Gir was solidly attached. Another warning bang came from the kitchen. "Just a minute!" Dib called back in response. He began to half walk half shuffle towards the door with Gir still holding on tightly onto his pant leg, then made it out the door and down the sidewalk like that. "Gir..." Dib said as he struggled to walk. "I have no idea what is WRONG with Zim, let alone how to help him..."
The robot grinned at that and hopped down off his leg. "You can figure it out!" He said happily, and then skipped over to his doggy outfit and pulled it on again.
Dib ran a hand through his unruly hair and sighed heavily. After a moment he realized that Gir was looking at him expectantly and sighed again, louder this time. "Why me?" He muttered under his breath. Even so he walked over and picked up the leash, flinching at Gir's squeal of delight at being walked.
"Gir," Dib tried to explain as he began walking in the direction of Zim's house, the robot happily skipping along beside him. "You know that the last time your master saw me, I was trying to perform horrible tests on him, don't you?"
"Mmm hmmm," Gir replied.
Dib raised an eyebrow. "Did you really?" He asked suspiciously.
The robot turned and looked up at him, then smiled again, his little tongue hanging out of the corner of his mouth. "Nope!" Was the reply.
Dib shook his head. "Yeah." He muttered to himself. "I didn't think so."

Dib felt just a little bit odd walking up the steps of Zim's house without having the garden gnomes attempt to blast him away. He looked at them suspiciously as Gir pranced up the walk, and clenched the robot's leash a little bit tighter in his hand. He didn't like this very much, especially when the gnomes swung their heads around to watch him with their red glow-y eyes. He was beginning to severely wish he had come with his backpack instead of just leaving right away with Zim's robot. That was really stupid of him actually, he thought to himself. "Gir..." He began as they stepped onto the front porch.
The robot did nothing beyond grin up at him stupidly. Then he pushed open the front door of the house. Tugging on his end of the leash Dib still had clenched in his hands he led the boy right across the room to an end table. Leaning down he pushed the table aside to reveal a dimly lighted pad that shone underneath it. Gir turned, smiled again, and chirped "There!"
"You want me to step on there?" Dib asked, suddenly hesitant as he recognized a probable elevator shaft. This was just too weird. He had an open invitation to enter Zim's underground labs... it had to be a trap...
"Uhhh Huuhhh..." Was the little robot's reply. Before Dib knew what was happening the robot managed to dart behind him and shoved him none to gently onto the lighted pad. Dib gasped and turned, but it was too late. A glass swung up and enveloped him, trapping him in a rounded see-through cage.
It WAS a trap. "GIR!" Dib shouted, pounding against the "glass" with his fists. He looked down at the light glowing underneath his feet, and was alarmed to see it brighten. He looked back up again, panicked.
The robot waved at him serenely from the other side of the glass. "You're gonna to hurt the Master REALLL bad!" Dib could hear the crazy robot squeal though the glass.
"No Gir!" Dib replied desperately, pressing both of his hands and his face against the glass as he tried to look as pleading as possible. "I thought you said you needed me to HELP Zim, not hurt him!!"
The robot had stopped listening. Instead he flipped himself backwards, and had started rolling about on the floor, giggling madly.
Dib stared. Gir's antics was the last thing he saw before the floor beneath him dropped and the elevator began to descend with him in it.
~~~
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