i couldn't decide which original story i wanted to write for nanowrimo, so i chose instead to write a full invader zim fanfiction. odds are, it won't reach 50k words, but that's okay. i just wanted to write it anyway.

the events that take place are related to the third chapter of my other fic, "malfunction junction," which explains why zim is on the girls' soccer team, but you don't have to read it to understand what's going on. it's just backstory, and this chapter will briefly explain it anyway.

When Dib was in seventh grade, Zim had the hilarious misfortune of being drafted onto the girls' soccer team after his Irken uniform had led the coach to believe he was a girl. If not for the fact that Gaz had also been placed on the soccer team (with about as much enthusiasm as Zim), this wouldn't have been an issue for Dib and would have only served as a source for a good laugh.

And for a while that's exactly what it was. For five years Zim was stuck on the team, forced to wear a violet uniform with the team name "URCHINS" splashed across his back and attend every game despite never needing to actually play. The Urchins had a winning streak for those five years ever since Gaz joined the team; with every game she left the opposing team little more than a crater in the green inside of ten minutes. Gaz was never interested in running around kicking a ball for two hours. Professor Membrane had encouraged her to join the team as a proactive outlet for her aggression, and Dib supposed it kind of worked.

For five years, Dib's problems with Zim didn't have anything to do with Zim being an Urchin. That is, until the Tournament.

("The Tournament? What kind of tournament?"

"I don't know, just the Tournament. It's in the mountains.")

Which is how Dib found himself in the office at school, clutching Gaz's permission slip in his hands and arguing with the receptionist at the front desk.

"I'm eighteen!" he insisted for the third time. "I'm a legal adult! If it's about missing school, I've had perfect marks since kindergarten! I can make up classwork!"

The receptionist was tired. "You're eighteen."

"Yes."

"And your want to go on this soccer trip as a chaperone to your little sister…"

"Yes."

"…who's seventeen."

Dib faltered slightly. It sounded dumb when she put it like that. He shook himself of embarrassment and scowled deeply, leaning on the desk.

"Look, Zim has to go on this trip too," he explained earnestly. "The Urchins have never had to go on an overnight trip for a game, and this trip is going to last three days. I'm not letting my sister go on a mysterious trip to the mountains for three days with that alien when I'm not around to keep him from doing…stuff!"

"Stuff," repeated the receptionist.

"Stuff," said Dib grimly. "It's the middle of winter, it's not even our school's soccer season. It's already fishy."

"Fishy," repeated the receptionist.

"Super fishy," said Dib gravely.

The receptionist sighed. "Just inform your teachers of your absence and it'll be up to them whether or not you'll be allowed to make up missed classwork."

There came a sharp tapping on the glass window to the office from the hallway. Gaz was waiting for Dib. Dib left the office and smiled proudly at her, taking his place beside her and walking out the front doors, heading for the student parking lot.

"Well, I did it!" he said. "I got them to let me be your chaperone!"

"Ugh," Gaz groaned, disgusted. "I don't want you to be my chaperone."

"Come on, Gaz, you know I don't trust Zim for a second, even when I'm already around to keep an eye on him!"

Gaz sneered at him. "Then why don't you go as his chaperone?"

"Very funny," Dib frowned. "I know Zim has something to do with this weird Tournament the team is going to play. It's not even soccer season. And what's up with it being in the mountains? Mt. Sappho is a volcano, you know!"

They reached Dib's car and Gaz glared at him ferociously over the roof of it. "Nobody else on the team is bringing a chaperone, Dib, so I'm expecting you not to bug me or embarrass me. That means shutting up and keeping your weirdness with Zim quiet and minimal, or else I'll plunge you into a hell so abominable and agonizing you'll be begging to take Judas's place in the mouth of Dis."

They got into the car. Gaz pulled out her Game Slave 4 and immersed herself in it as Dib pulled haphazardly out of the parking lot and sped down the road for home. They went inside and filed up the stairs to their rooms in silence. The trip was tomorrow, and they were expected to be in the school parking lot at six in the morning to board the charter bus, so Dib hauled out his suitcase from the closet. It was dusty and smelled kind of bad, and when he jostled it a roach skittered out and a cluster of spiders toppled onto the floor and scattered. He wasn't sure why he had this thing. It was older than he was, and his family never went on trips, much less ones long enough to call for a suitcase.

Still, he shook the thing out to rid it of anymore pests before putting it on his bed and then turning to his computer to check the cameras he'd set up around Zim's house, as usual. The alien wasn't home yet; he still walked to and from school, while Dib had gotten a car two years ago and drove like a maniac. There were no signs of GIR getting up to anything either, so Dib turned away from his computer to start packing his suitcase. Let's see…laptop, camera…books, cyanide pills (just a precaution), pictures of Zim...extra underwear, three days worth of clothes, toiletries…

By the time he finished packing, Dib had to sit on his suitcase in order to force it shut. He'd worked up a sweat from the effort, and when he glanced at his computer screen, he saw Zim walking up the pathway to his evil house. Dib put on his headphones and strained to hear what Zim was saying as he entered his house. He needed to fix his laser microphone, it was hard to pick things up from this distance…

"…a monumental waste of my precious time, GIR!" Zim was saying. "Five years—five!—of my life, wasted on this stupid, stinking sport, and now I'm required to go on some 'field trip' for three days?! To play in a tournament that the Gaz child will have wrapped up in the blink of an eye?! It's infuriating, I hate this sport!"

Huh, so maybe Zim wasn't behind the mysterious Tournament. Still, Dib fully intended to tag along with Gaz. Just because Zim wasn't up to something having to do with the trip, that didn't mean he wasn't up to anything at all. Dib sat back in his chair and settled in as usual to obsessively watch Zim and do his homework. He didn't have school tomorrow, but he didn't want to put it off until the last minute; he didn't let his grades slip when Zim first arrived to Earth and he wasn't going to let them slip now. He went downstairs a few hours later to get something for dinner and found Gaz at the kitchen table with their father.

"Have you packed yet?" he asked his sister, who peered at him with one eye and slurped a string of spaghetti.

"Yeah."

"Gaz was telling me that you've secured yourself a position as her chaperone on her trip," Professor Membrane said. "It's good to know you're so concerned about her well-being, son!"

"Yeah. Zim's going, and I want to make sure he doesn't do anything horrible. The Tournament's next to a volcano, you know."

"Of course it is."

"I was also telling him that the game is going to be on TV," Gaz said warningly to Dib, "so you better remember what I said about bugging and/or embarrassing me."

"Be nice, honey," Membrane chided mildly. "And of course I will tune in on your game! I know I haven't been able to make it to all of the games you've won, but I will definitely be able to see this one at the labs! I trust that you'll do your best not to embarrass your sister, son."

"I won't, sheesh!" With an indignant huff, Dib turned away and set about making himself a sandwich. He left the kitchen to plant himself in front of the television just in time for the Mysterious Mysteries theme.

Despite going two consecutive sleepless nights already and telling himself he'd turn in for the night at ten o' clock, Dib found himself reporting to Agent Darkbooty three times and absorbing himself in a recent report of a Spring-heeled Jack from Agent Tunaghost, which led to another session of recreational Bigfoot research, which, in turn, reminded him to read up on the Yeti some more, considering where the Tournament was to be held. He was dozing at his desk with his chin propped up in one hand at 5:30 when Gaz came in, startling him.

"Take a shower," she said tersely, "we gotta be at the school in a half hour."

Cursing under his breath for forgetting to go to sleep again, Dib shuffled into the bathroom and showered quickly, then padded downstairs to get breakfast. He didn't have the energy to be annoyed with Gaz when he saw she'd eaten the last of the cereal, so he ate a slice of toast at the breakfast table in silence. When 5:45 ticked around, they dragged their suitcases downstairs and loaded them into the car. At 5:48, Dib screeched to a halt in the school parking lot.

The parking lot was dimly lit by the sickly yellow lights inside the charter bus, but the Urchins were not yet allowed to board. The girls of the soccer team stood shivering in the December chill in two lines before the two soccer coaches heading the trip, Coaches Praline and D'Olive.

"Gaz!" Coach D'Olive roared across the parking lot upon sighting them. "Fall in! You too, Zim!"

Gaz got in line, and Dib looked around for Zim. Zim was just arriving, looking far from happy. When he spotted Dib, he bared his teeth.

"Dib!" he snarled. "What are you doing here?"

"Chaperoning," Dib said easily.

"Chaperoning?" He looked horrified. "You mean to say you're coming on the trip too?!"

"Yup!" said Dib smugly. "You didn't think you'd get three whole days unsupervised alien treachery, did you?"

"I thought at the very least I'd get three whole days of no giant-headed, stupid-haired, ugly-faced Dib bothering me at every turn," Zim said unhappily. "How could this wretched trip have gotten worse before it's even begun!?"

"Zim!" Coach D'Olive hollered. "I said fall in! Buddies are being assigned!"

Zim glared balefully at Dib before getting into the second line next to Gaz. Dib joined her as she reached the front of the line.

"Do you have a chaperone with you?" Coach Praline asked, looking at his clipboard.

"Unfortunately."

"Hmm." Praline's eyes lazily went up and down Dib's person before returning to his clipboard. "Your buddy will be Zim for the next three days. You and your chaperone will travel in a group of three with her for the duration of the trip for safety."

"Whatever." Gaz walked away. Dib didn't bother correcting the coach on Zim's gender; if he hadn't figured it out in five years, it's likely he never would.

Dib went to stand next to the bus, warming himself by the exhaust pipe until it was time to board. He drew himself up to his full height as Zim approached him thunderously; they had grown, both of them, since Zim's arrival on Earth, with Dib standing at a respectable height of 6'1" while Zim had barely reached 5'3". Something about Irken gravity being heavier or something.

"Listen carefully, Dib," Zim said, poking Dib in the chest. "I don't understand the point of this 'buddy system' the soccer humans have enacted, but I do understand that I need to make something very clear." He poked him again and Dib swatted at him. "You are your sister's chaperone, not mine! I've been an adult since before your father was even a cell. Gaz is your only charge! You will have absolutely no authority over ZIM!"

Dib blinked slowly at the little alien's glowering face, then reached up casually and flicked him where his nose would have been if he had one. Zim screeched.

"All aboard!" the bus driver called from the bus, and blasted the horn like a train conductor.

Dib, Gaz, and Zim were the first to board. Dib followed Gaz to the back of the bus, where she took the window seat, and he sat beside her. Zim flopped into the seat next to Dib and immediately pulled up a computer screen from his watch.

"What are you doing?" Dib asked suspiciously. Zim scoffed.

"None of your business, stink boy," he said snidely, but proceeded to explain, "I sent out a few mods to the location where the Tournament is to be held to set up a second underground base in the mountains. A good invader always has more than one base."

"You're setting up a second base just for a three day trip?" Talk about a workaholic. Years ago, Dib would have been appalled at the thought—now, it was just kind of annoying. Most of Zim's antics these days were just annoying, really.

"If you thought I'd treat this pointless soccer trip as a vacation from my work, you thought wrong."

Dib crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat, unbothered. "Good luck with your evil, Zim. You won't get away with a single thing."

The bus rumbled underneath them, and at last, it began to move. They pulled out of the parking lot and set off down the road. The Tournament at Mt. Sappho awaited them.