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Hope	By : LadyNephero Category: +G through L > Invader Zim > AU/AR-Alternate Universe-Alternate Reality Views: 1600 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Invader Zim, nor do I make any money from this work.

Chapter List
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As the shriek of the engines got louder, Dib closed his eyes. Forces pulled at his ribcage, pushing him back against his seat, pressing harder and harder as wind roared under steel. Soon the plane evened out, and the force against his chest subsided. It never lasted more than a moment, but it was in these moments, Dib liked to pretend he was blasting off in a spaceship.
                He let out a sigh, his fantasy broken as soon as it was obvious they were staying within Earth’s atmosphere.
                “You’re scared of flying?”
                Dib turned to his left, at the seat next to his own, and smiled. A decade ago, he would have thought he was dreaming up the woman who sat in the next seat. Saying he was an awkward teen would have been a massive understatement; he had never been terribly good with social interaction, tending towards rambling whenever he got really excited or nervous. As one might imagine, endless nonsensical monologues had a tendency to turn the other schoolchildren off to his presence.
                Having gotten used to solitude at an early age, his social skills hadn’t had a chance to improve much. Really, the only interaction he truly had was with complete strangers over a secretive network. And… well, that didn’t really count much in the “normal” category.
                So, if he ever went back and told his eleven year old self that in the future, he would not only be sitting next to a gorgeous (human) woman, but would be her partner (and friend!) as well, he was sure his younger self would have laughed. Good joke, that one.
                Nazca raised a dark eyebrow at him, and Dib gave a nervous little laugh. There he went, getting lost inside of his own head again. Seriously, it was like an entirely different dimension, with how easily he could wander in it.
                “No,” he said, finally, blushing a bit as he tried to explain himself in a way that didn’t sound entirely stupid. “No, I… I kind of… always pretend I’m… taking off into outer space, or something.” Well. That was an abysmal failure on the “don’t sound stupid” attempt.
                Nazca just smiled, her dark eyes crinkling in the way that always made his insides feel like goo. Even now, after being paired up as partner agents for a year now, he wasn’t sure if the gooey feeling was fear, or… some sappy desire to just have any effect on her at all.
                As always, though, her smile was nothing but amused. The weird feeling in his stomach intensified, and he fought not to blush harder. Being exceptionally pale, it wasn’t like it was something he could easily hide. His palms pricked a bit, and he tried to be subtle about wiping the sweat off on his pants.
                “Man, it’s warm in here, isn’t it?” Nazca offered, plucking at her shirt collar and fanning herself a bit. Dib sighed in relief and nodded. This was one aspect of Nazca that he particularly liked. She never let an awkward moment fester; she always knew just what to say to make a weird moment into something perfectly normal. Considering Dib had a nasty habit of making weird moments wherever he went, it was a particularly useful trait for his partner to possess. On more than one occasion, it even saved his life.
                Like when he tried to explain to a very isolated and rather uneducated family that they were not in danger of a sasquatch attack, and if they would just stop panicking for two seconds, they’d realize that the sasquatch was just their daughter’s rather violently jealous ex-boyfriend making trouble because she had an unfortunate tendency to put out rather often.
                How he didn’t get his face blown off with a shotgun, Lord only knew. Nazca managed to even tempers out, and by the end of the assignment, Dib was allowed to walk away with only minimal injuries. The boyfriend might not have been a sasquatch, but he certainly fought like one when he thought the gentleman in the trenchcoat was interested in backwoods ass.
                Nazca was nothing short of a miracle worker. And Dib needed all the miracles he could get. He even had a tendency to weird out his fellow agents, though he never could understand why. He would always get reassigned after a few months, and he would always shrug and accept it as his lot in life. He worked better alone, he would say to himself, as if that made the statement any truer. It didn’t, but it made himself feel just the slightest fraction better to pretend that he didn’t care.
                So when Nazca showed up, and actually chatted with him more than was necessary, and actually stuck around without requesting a reassignment, Dib was instantly smitten. He knew it was a stupid reason, and he knew that it was puppy love at best, but when someone offers you their friendship and affection after so long of being denied it? You grab it, you latch onto it, and by God if you don’t manage to smother it, you never let go.
                Well. That was a rather creepy train of thought. Dib straightened in his seat, and turned to look over at his companion.
                “What do you think this even is?” Somehow, Dib felt like he wasn’t talking about their current assignment at all, but Nazca took it that way. She shrugged, her perfectly arched eyebrows coming together in the faintest wrinkle of worry. Even with wrinkles, she looked good.
                “I… honestly don’t even know. They were so quiet about it when we got the assignment, and the files… I mean… I don’t…” she went a little pale as she regarded the satchel between her feet, and the slim manila folder poking out of the top. Dib gave a grimace, remembering all too well what had been encased in there. The photographs alone would be enough to turn anyone’s stomach sour, and even someone like Dib who had always been fascinated with anatomy had to admit he needed to look away more than once.
                “Just information gathering? They can’t really expect us to do much, we don’t have that kind of authority…”
                “I guess so. From what I understand, we’ll be met at the airport by the local PD and… and brought to the newest scene. Uhm, Moth. If I… pass out…”
                “You won’t, don’t worry.” Dib assured her, and actually had the courage to give an awkward sort of pat to her shoulder. He knew her fears weren’t unfounded, however; they were paranormal investigators, and the things they had seen in the case file looked like something out of a serial killer’s wet dream. In addition to the few photographs they had, the lovely little footnote that there were seven similar cases was enough to put Dib on edge.
                All started with abductions. The normal kind of abduction, not the UFO kind, which was kind of weird when the two agents specialized in the latter and not the former. Then, when a search party was introduced, the bodies would be found. If you could call scraps of meat and rivers of blood a singular body. Sometimes, they couldn’t. The victims seemed perfectly random, but it was the space in which the murders took place, and just HOW they took place, which made the authorities think that perhaps there was something a little bigger going on. Dib closed his eyes and sank back into his seat, flicking through his memory to look at the crime scene photos again. He hadn’t been able to shake the images out of his mind for the past few days, but it was better than opening the folder up on a plane and risking anyone else getting nightmares for the rest of their lives.
                Nothing about it made sense. The murders themselves seemed beyond any kind of rationale, which murders of such a vicious degree often were. But what made even less sense was why the agents were being deployed, when there was nothing there to hint at any paranormal activity. It made him feel useless, because he knew that was what they would be. They would go, take more pictures, look around, and have nothing. Some psycho in the woods would be arrested, and they wouldn’t have a thing to do with it.
                At the very least, and this was probably the only bonus, the murders had taken place not a day’s drive from his hometown. He hadn’t been back in years and years, he was always too busy flying from place to place to investigate this and document that. Not that he necessarily had a ton of reasons to go home – he rarely saw his father, he didn’t have any childhood friends to visit, and somehow the city always ended up looking as alien as any other city in the world.
                But there was his little sister. While their relationship wasn’t what anyone would call loving, they seemed to be partners in weirdness. Gazline had never had many friends as a kid, either. Really, sometimes Dib wondered if the girl’s videogame was her only friend. It wouldn’t have surprised him in the least.
                It was her birthday in a few days. Dib had missed out on so many since he graduated and went off to be a full time employee of the Swollen Eyeball Network. Sure, he phoned, and sure, he spoke with his family through a webcam, but it wasn’t the same as physically being there. Dib knew how disappointing it was when the only people there for your birthday was recordings or a videocall, (even if he could only really remember his more recent birthdays, falling out of a tree at fifteen while being chased by a swamp monster will do that to a guy) and so he had never quite shaken the guilt of it whenever he had to wish Gaz a happy birthday through a feed.
                She never said if it bothered her, never gave the slightest hint to make him think she was disappointed, but Dib felt guilty nonetheless. It made him feel like his father, and while Dib held no ill will to the professor for being the wild success that he was, it never really felt nice.
                But this time, this time he would be there. Gaz was turning twenty this year, she had already moved out of their childhood home and out into the world, was scraping up a living as an artist and not doing too bad for herself. For whatever reason that Dib couldn’t quite fathom, the world was all too willing to shell out cash for pictures of videogame characters.
                He had it all planned in his head. Just before they packed up to head back to their department, Dib would plan a small trip to the outskirts of the suburbs that Gaz had moved to. They’d go get pizza, just like the days when they were younger and the house ran out of anything besides baked beans because hell if Dib was going to let her try to destroy the world with the can-opener. Just the way she eyed it each time unnerved him, that was all.
                Maybe he could even convince Nazca to stick around. They could make it more of a party that way, and hell, if Gaz liked her and Nazca liked Gaz then maybe they could all have pizza dinners more often. That would be nice.
                “What’re you thinking?” came the soft voice to his left, and he opened his eyes to look at Nazca.
                “Uh… just… thinking about getting some pizza.”
                Nazca stared at him for a moment, and Dib realized just how huge a jump it was to go from their case files to pizza. He flushed. Nazca laughed.
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Hope