I do not own Invader Zim okay? This is written for the One Word Prompt Challenge on the Writer's Anonymous forum. I picked the number 29 (Hey that is my birthday April 29) and the word was "silhouette". Well since I have been wanting to write a DATR fic for the longest time I took a stab at it. Well, enough of this A/N, on with the fic!

It had been nearly 6 years since Tak had come to the planet and nearly destroyed it. Yet there was something that Dib couldn't shake. I know that she wanted to hand Earth over to the Tallest but yet before I found out about the plan, she took a genuine interest in me... He thought as he shut his locker looking at the shadow behind his back. It was his senior year and all he had to do was just make it to graduation. Then he could go to college. Far away from his classmates who would be lucky to be a manager of McMeaties one day. Valentine's day was fast approaching and the thought of the holiday where people gave each other slabs of meat to show an attraction made him sick. The old practice of cards and candy has a better notion some way. Seems better than meat. Dib through as he walked into his science class and sat down. Out the corner of his eyes he saw a familiar shape behind him as he was one of the first in the class.

"Oh. You showed up today." The teacher said looking at him.

"I can't cut this class. I have to make it through senior year then I can go on to college." He said simply not caring anymore. If in six years, no one could tell Zim was an alien, no one would give him the decency to just ignore him if they didn't like him, then he would just not bother with their approval. "So what chapter are we on?"

"Chapter 9, Physics." The teacher said as other students began to filter into the classroom.

Physics, something I could teach the class about. I did repair an Irken spaceship on my own already. That is beyond Newton's First Law and delves into Quantum Physics. Dib thought as he opened the book up and stared at the page, looking like he was paying attention as the bell rang. The teacher turned to the blackboard and wrote on it, 'The Law of Inertia.' She began the lecture as Dib tuned her out and looked over the corner of his eye, he saw two curly lines next to each other. The shadow looked so familiar to him, like the one being who he felt any care for, despite what she tried to do before. Dib kept staring at the shadows before he turned to see they were not in fact, Tak's antenna but some wire from a project done years before.

"Mr. Membrane." The teacher said as she glared at him. "Since you seem not to be paying attention, can you tell us Newton's First Law?" She added glaring at him, with an evil intensity that could rival Miss Bitters. If there was one thing that she hated, it was when a student did not pay attention in her class.

"An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force." Dib said simply. "Got a problem with that?"

"I have a problem with your attitude young man!" The teacher said as she headed to her desk and wrote a note. "Take this to the guidance counselor. AGAIN!" She said as she shoved the note into Dib's hands as he picked up his books and headed out, much to Zim's laughter in the corner of the room.

"Foolish Earth Boy!" Zim laughed. "Head out of here to the guidance counselor's office and see how crazy you are!" Dib just looked over and cast a rude hand gesture at Zim

"And another note!" The teacher said as she wrote another note and put it in Dib's hands. "We do not flip off students from other countries with medical conditions."

"Fine." Dib said as he walked out of the classroom. Zim had managed to gain more support for himself and make Dib look worse when he learned that "alien" meant "foreigner" as well as "extraterrestrial" and used it to his advantage when Dib had tried to convince the class he was in fact an alien.

"Why can't you see that there are no features here that are human! I even have a genetic mapping of his DNA compared to mine! There are 46 chromosomes on humans! Zim's doesn't even come close to that! It couldn't be more obvious he's an alien!" Dib had pleaded in that presentation. Although part of him wasn't so hopeful that it would convince them. He had given the same presentation to his father, a well known scientist, who should be able to see the difference in a heartbeat but got the same kind of dismissal he had gotten for year. The most that he could get is the admittance that Zim's DNA was not normal human DNA.

"I am human, I am just from another country! How dare you assume that I am some outer space alien when I just moved from a very tiny country no one knows about years ago!" Zim had replied back. With this rebuttal, the class had jumped to Zim's defense.

"Dib, how could you make accusations like that against someone?" Zita said as she held Zim close while he cried crocodile tears to make Dib look bad.

"I'm going to lunch." Dib had said as he left the classroom, knowing the teacher wouldn't care and just give him a C grade like he did everyone.

Dib walked down the halls of the Hi-Skool, knowing that no one seemed to care where he was or what he did anymore as long as he was away from them. He headed into the bathroom and sat down on the toilet as he looked at a few pictures he had taken around the garage. The shadow looked similar to something he had seen before in his mind. Like it was in his memory for years before. Something he was close to. He set one of the pictures on his physics textbook, opened it to chapter 9 and began to draw a better, less blurry representation of what the silhouette could be. He locked the stall door and began to grunt in frustration as he picked out the details where it was rather pixilated.

"Eat some more fiber if you are having that much trouble!" A voice said from across the restroom.

"Shut up!" Dib said. Just a few more months... He thought as he looked at the outline he finished drawing over his textbook. No, it can't be her... I mean I do have her ship, I have gotten it to fly recently, but no, there is no way... He thought as he got up and finally conceded to himself he had to at least humor the school staff and go to the guidance counselor's office to feed them the usual tripe he did to get them to leave him alone. As he headed down the hall, he saw another shadow behind him on the locker. Only this time it looked a little different. It wasn't like the Irken he had seen in his security cameras, or at least that thought he saw, but it seemed almost like an older version of Tak's old disguise. There seemed to be two points at what would be the shoulder length of a teenage girl.

Dib shook it away as a desperate memory wanting to escape this town. Tak had always embodied that in his mind. After reading her logs when he had translated her ship's records, he found that she had her dreams denied by Zim blowing up a snack machine. A system that would not give her a chance to prove herself when something that happened beyond her control kept her from the Invader test. A society that valued her as a janitor on a planet that was nothing but a mess to begin with even though her merits proved she was much better than that. These factors he read in her log were ones he could feel himself. A society that would not listen to him. A system that placed him lower than dirt. A world that rewarded those who were dumber than him. One that rewarded idiots who didn't deserve it. He pulled out the printouts of the logs from his bag that he always kept with him as he headed to the guidance counselor's office.

"Oh it's you again." The receptionist said as she saw the notes the teacher wrote Dib placed in front of her. "You know the drill Membrane, sit down and wait for someone to be done. Mr. Smith is still sleeping off a hangover and Mrs. Steelstein is talking to a new girl who got sent here after calling everyone in her class a moron."

New girl, so it isn't Gaz. Dib thought as he looked at Mrs. Steelstein's office from over his printout of Tak's logs. The old battered papers gave him some comfort as he wasn't the only one wronged by their worlds. The connection they shared even though he had vowed to destroy Zim's invading force. But we have the same goal too. She wants to destroy Zim. And some of these later logs question her duty to the Tallest after their lack of action on her behalf. He thought as he looked intently at the door. The glass was frosted and thick but there it was again, her shadow, the silhouette that had been haunting him more and more over the months. However his attention was drawn to the receptionist.

"Mr. Smith took his medicine and has a cup of coffee now. He'll see you. Just don't speak too loud." She said pointing him to Mr. Smith's door.

"Okay." Dib said simply.

The desk was parallel the door so he could see who was going in and out as well as hopefully hear the other student in Mrs. Steelstein's office as the walls were paper thin.

"Oh you weren't much help at all. You would never get what I am saying. I just came here because that stupid teacher made me. I promise I won't do it again. I know just keep my nose down and never dare question an authority figure no matter how wrong they are." The student said as the door slammed behind her. The voice sounded incredibly familiar.

"Now that can't be her!" Dib yelled as Mr. Smith looked up at him.

"Too loud." Mr. Smith said as he spilled a cup of coffee on himself that he seemed to not notice. He got up, headed to the coffee pot in his office and poured himself a cup and placed 3 aspirin in with his creamer and sugar.

You're setting a real good example for the types of kids who get sent here...Dib thought as Mr. Smith headed back to his seat and turned to him. "So what are you in for again?"

"The usual." Dib sighed. "So just give me the usual lecture and I'll go and shut up."

"Fine." He said. "I don't think anything anyone here could say would have any effect on you anyway. But we want the graduation rate to look good in this school, so we're just letting you slide." Mr. Smith said as he wrote a pass for Dib on a sticky note on his desk. "Just let me make friends with Jack and Daniels."

"Drunk." Dib said to himself as he took the pass and walked out of the office. He looked at his watch and knew lunch would be coming soon so he headed towards the cafeteria to hopefully get his usual seat in the corner that no one dared head to. As he headed down the hall and into the cafeteria, he looked to find someone seated in his usual chair. A black figure in the dimly lit corner

"So, you have lunch at this time too? And you were sent to that idiot's office as well?" The silhouetted figure said as she got up from the chair.

"What do you want Tak, and why are you stalking me? I kept seeing your outline, your silhouette all over the place for the past few months. I thought I was going insane." Dib sighed.

"From what your classmates say, you already are. But they're the ones who are nuts." Tak said not stepping out from the darkness. "Oh and it is impolite to read a lady's diary" She smirked as she shoved the worn printout of her log at Dib's hands on the table.

"I uhhh..." Dib blushed trying to explain away his indiscretion as it was her log, her diary pretty much. "Wanted to learn more about the Irken Empire."

"What? You already know all about it from having to live with these humans for as long as you have." Tak laughed as she walked out of the light and looked at Dib. "I can see you have gotten taller. In my people's culture that means importance."

"Yeah so?" Dib said looking at Tak's eyes. She was wearing her human disguise but he had noticed she had gotten a little taller over the years as well.

"You're better than these fools. You're just like I was when I tried to live within the Irken Empire's rules. I have been watching you. I had my ship crash in your yard for a reason. You're the only human that could fix it. The only one I could rely on." Tak smirked.

"So what are you suggesting?" Dib asked.

"Getting out of here." Tak said. "You read my logs, I've been the shadow watching you forever. We're the same. The shadow in each other's minds haunting us of what we really are. Outcasts. Faceless shadows to our worlds."

"After lunch." He smirked. "I am hungry you know." With this, he walked back into the shadow with her, the only things that their classmates could see with the silhouette of their outlines, the last thing that any of them would remember.

So how was that? Good? Bad? Short? Long? Let me know in a review. I tried to make this as that Tak's following him was always a shadow in his mind and he just kept seeing her silhouette. But I don't have much else to say here so remember to read, well you just did and to review. Ciao for now

otherrealmwriter

aka

Realm