All IZ characters belong to Jhonen. Terry and man-eating minnie tiny weenie rolls are mine... well... minnie tiny weenies and associated holidays are T's... but none the less!

Plot warnings: Warning: includes impreg, although it should be noted that it was not through homosexual actions.

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Chapter 1 - Astronomy (original chapter title)

A pair of coffee toned eyes glared from behind framed glass, and a palm reached out cautiously, fingers grasping a metal pipe interwoven within the mess of cords. To this vision, the universe was upside down, taunting as what was only ten feet loomed like thirty. A bead of sweat rolled down pale skin and to a brow furrowed in concentration.

"Yes, Gir, I believe that this plan shall finish the Dib beast once and for all, and then we can final move on to world domination!" A cackle erupted in the room, which was followed by squeaky cheering.

"Hurray for doom-i-nation! Yay!" The boy sprawled out across the wire and tube ceiling winced at the high-pitched exclamation, and thin fingers grasped even harder in resistance as the blood began rushing to his head, stomach churning as if it was full of oatmeal. "Then you're gonna' ask out Gazzy, right? Right?" The climber inhaled sharply.

"Eh… no." A mistake was made as the human above sighed rather loudly in belief, and then gulped as he literally heard an all too familiar green head snap upwards.

He glanced down at the ground, migraine enlarging as his head hung. He smiled nervously. "Eh heh… um… hi?" He yelped as he was yanked from the ceiling, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

"Dib beast!"

"Hey Zim." He answered, peering out at his enemy. His blood boiled at the cocky smile across the alien's features, and he growled, and tugged at the mechanical leg suspending him in the air. "Put me down, alien scum!"

Zim laughed maniacally. "Fool! I wasn't going to vaporize you until Tuesday… but this is perfect! You walked right into my trap!"

Dib squinted, pushing his glasses up. "If you were going to vaporize me Tuesday, how could I have walked into a trap today?"

"Do not question Zim!" Dib was chucked to the floor, and winced as his arm landed in an uncomfortable position under his body. Zim hovered over him, pointing some form of bulging gun at him. "You, stinky… thing… are doomed!"

The teenager's eyes shot wide, and he rolled to the side so he wouldn't become a pile of soot. He glared up… then blinked… and blinked again… then knitted his brow. "Hey… since when have you been tall?" There was no response but a ping of a laser, and he had to scramble to his feet to avoid it.

"And since when do you not wear a coat?"

"Since I began scaling ceilings." A blur of blue and black lunged at extraterrestrial and the two enemies broke into a brawl, fighting to obtain control of the vaporizer. A green dog simply watched from the sideline, taking large slurps from an enormous freezy. Purple, blue, and dark green became the new fashion as fists met flesh and knees met stomach. Even red was flecked about as a set of razor teeth bit down on a pale hand that attempted to squash the green face into the floor.

This continued for quite a while until the front door slammed open, silencing the fight. Both paused mid-fight, not daring to look up at the looming shadow as Dib was lurched away, Zim kicked firmly in the gut to the point where his eyes watered, and order was restored once more as the scrawny human child was dragged off.

"I almost had him this time, Gaz!" Dib whined, plodding reluctantly behind her.

"That's what you say every other day. Now shut up. You're voice is hurting my ears." Dib exhaled deeply as he followed her. She did have a point – he and Zim were at it almost every other day, fighting until she tugged them apart and delivered proper punishment to each. If not for her, he would probably have died about ten times in the past week. Of course, being a sixteen year old junior paranormal investigator, he was too proud to admit so.

His mind began wandering as he attempted to remain on her fair side – she didn't have a good side. "Did you notice that's he's grown pretty tall over the last year or so?"

"He looks average to me."

"No, I mean for an Irken."

Gaz whipped out her portable gaming device and shrugged. "So what if he did?"

Her brother stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Well... the Irken empire is a height based society… which is bad…." his lips twisted distastefully, "Because it means that Zim could maybe receive even more weapons, or worse-"he gulped, "-an invasion."

Gaz scoffed, and continued to pad her fingers against the device in her hands. "So?"

Dib ignored her, glancing up at the sky, which was becoming a deep shade of cobalt, the moon just beginning to show, much in the likeness of a phantom. The breeze was mild, and the sun languidly disappearing, casting shadows at the grimy buildings they passed as they strolled along the graying sidewalk.

"I think I might want to keep a look out for anything suspicious during the next couple of weeks. I'll probably set up my telescope tonight and-"

"Don't you have a big exam tomorrow?" The color drained from the child's face, and he sped forward, abandoning his sniggering little sister, who calmly continued at a relaxed pace down the sidewalk, game in hand.

After all, home was only a block away.

Dib tussled his hair, lacing his fingers into his fringe and shoving them into the rest of the raven mess. After middle school, he decided that he would grow the previously buzzed sides of his head out to just a bit under his earlobes, so that he had a shaggy – almost beach - look about his scythe.

He hardly noticed that his palm against his forehead was creating a red patch, or that he had nibbled the end of his pencil nearly to the led. A lengthy study packet lay open before him, only fifteen of the forty pages finished. He tapped his pencil against the desk, hunched over it as he squinted at the page, which was beginning to blur. He had never been particularly good at history.

The boy's eyes shifted to the digital clock glowing beside him. "Eleven forty one and still nowhere." He muttered, resting his head against the desk. It wasn't that history was challenging – he was Professor Membrane's child, after all – it was just that he found it incredibly boring and much less important than his other subjects or putting a halt to world domination.

Stiffly, he arched his back, scrunching his face as his joints popped, and stretched his arms out behind his head. He gave another glance at his paper, and shook his head, standing. "This is pointless" he muttered, shoving the papers aside, and tossed a peek at the window. The stars twinkled at him, beckoning sweetly, begging him to unravel their mysteries.

With a grin, he crossed the room to his closet, gathered up his telescope, laptop, and radar, then slipped into the hall as quietly as possible.

Bleeping delight soothed him as he serenely searched the heavens through the lens of a cylinder, smirking as he roamed across beautiful space sceneries. The wind spoke softly in his ear, dancing with the tail of his trench coat. While his family below slept or constructed amazing machines, he basked in the hugeness of the universe from his tiny perch upon the roof of the only dwelling he had ever known.

He stole a glance at his watch, and frowned. "It's almost one. And I still have to take that stupid test." Dib muttered to himself, and turned to his laptop, which glowed warmly. He shut it down and snapped the lid on it shut, rambling to himself about how useless the subject he would soon be quizzed on was, then began packing up his radar.

It was a small but bright light in the night sky behind him that suddenly caught his attention. Quickly, he thrust around, and stared as a light traveled across the face of the darkness. Dib hummed – a shooting star. Almost like the one he and his mother had watched so long ago. He tenderly peered through the telescope once again, watching as it fell toward the horizon line.

He was startled when it abruptly stopped. The hairs on the back of his neck raised as it hovered in place for a while, and then rose up again, zooming across another patch of land. He tensed, realizing it was changing from the size of a gnat to the size of a dime, and continued. "Oh no…." he mumbled, imagining about fifty other Zims aboard the possible death machine, all grinning cruelly down at the little blue planet, discoursing to each other the most entertaining ways to blow it up. He fidgeted, unable to do much but watch, and nearly scream as it began approaching him, growing larger and larger so that he had to pry away from the telescope and simply gaze in horror.

He stared up as the large silver disk swooped over him, and then stopped, hovering soundlessly. A blue light trickled down, and that was the last Dib remembered before waking up in the middle of the street under headlights with the horrible urge to vomit.

Membrane stomped through the living room towards the door as car horns began sounding, lights filling through his window. "Damn the solicitors, I'll-"

Somebody else opened his door before he could reach it. A pizza boy clad in red shirt and cap with a horrible case of acne stood in the doorway. "Dude, there's a kid in the middle of the road! And he's throwing up!"

Membrane looked around the teenager, squinting, and low and behold crumpled in the granite was the form of an underweight boy curled into a ball, heaving. The scientist recognized him easily, and brushed past the delivery boy, shouting "Son!"

The delivery boy, it turned out, wasn't the only one there, as there were two of them, and a couple of the neighbors had stepped out, flipping on their porch lights. Membrane knelt to the ground, laying a hand on his flesh and blood as the contents of the child's stomach continued to pool. After a couple of moments, he frantically mumbled "Son, can you hear me?"

"Uh-huh…." Dib nodded his head feebly before retching again, clutching his stomach, although at this point there was nothing left.

"Son?" The high school student rolled unto his back, coughing, but worked hard to keep a dizzy stare at his father's goggles. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Three…."

Membrane sighed, curling his two fingers back into his fist, and glanced about. With as much dignity as possible, he heaved his child into his arms, and nodded at the pizza boy as he left the audience, finding more comfort behind the door of his abode. He laid his boy across the couch, and pulled up a chair, sitting across from him.

There was nothing left to do but wait.

Dib bolted upright, gasping, chest heaving up and down. He looked around – and was relieved to find that he wasn't on an autopsy table in a UFO. But he was a bit surprised to find himself on the couch, his father sitting across from him reading the paper, the sun beaming through the window.

"The test. I'm late!" Dib yelped, throwing the blankets that had been draped over him unto the floor. Membrane slapped his newspaper down, and firmly pressed the boy back unto the couch.

"You won't be going anywhere until your temperature recedes to the average range." The father said sternly, but in an oddly encyclopedia-like way. Dib blinked, a bit stunned, and tenderly laid his own fingers across his cheek, a bit shocked at the layer of sweat soaking it. "What on Earth did you do last night?" The man tapped his foot impatiently, crossing his arms.

Dib stared, open mouthed, but stopped himself before any words seeped through. "I… I don't know." He murmured.

"I know your expressions like the backside of a hydrogen atom, and you're lying to me."

Dib glanced away. "If I told you, you wouldn't believe me." He twiddled his thumbs uneasily, "I hardly do."

"Son, you can tell me anything."

Dib rolled his eyes. He knew he couldn't. He would, but the Professor would never believe him. "I… uh… was abducted by aliens." He murmured, already feeling the intense glare at his lowered forehead. "And I… I think they might have done something to upset my stomach. Maybe…." Ashamed, he glanced away. He sounded like some geek crying out for attention, and the truth was, was that besides the UFO, he had no reconciliation of being abducted. He had no proof to even convince himself.

"Son, sometimes we have horrible nightmares that may cause us to feel ill and, occasionally, sleepwalk. Perhaps you should take a day or so off of school until you're able to sort through your fears." Dib sighed, although for once, he really wanted to believe his father's words. But the burning sensation right before his stomach wouldn't have it.

"Yes sir." He mumbled, rolling unto his side and staring at the wall. He despised being treated like a child. He was sixteen! Yes, only by a week or so, but still. Yet, his father's sudden concern made a greedy bit of warmth spread through his young bones, momentarily washing away years of watching his father's indifference. It compelled the boy to comply, though he did have one stubborn request. "Can you call Gaz and ask her to bring me home a copy of my history exam?"

Membrane beamed with pride. "Of course – after all, education is vital."

Dib closed his eyes and smiled a bit, but it fell crooked as his stomach knotted, and he squirmed, trying to find a comfort zone, and a frown took over his features soon enough. His last conscious thought remained 'Damn… what kind of poisoning did those stupid aliens give me?"