Well, this should be an interesting experiment. I have quite a bit planned for this story, but will anyone care? We shall see.

Prologue: Something Weird

Gaz speaking

I always knew there was something weird about her.

I mean, she was around all the time. Dib had sort of a thing for her, at first, and she was one of the few people who could actually stand him (which was weird enough on its own), so she was at our house whenever he could get her to come over. Her and her frickin' cat. I never knew anybody as attached to an animal as she was to that cat, though I guess since it wasn't really a cat, it doesn't really count.

Weird enough that she should want to be around my brother, and listen when he spewed paranormal chunks at her like a kid who'd snarfed one too many sausages on Valentine's Day. Weird enough that she should be practically soldered to her cat. But what's more, I never saw her eat, or so much as pop a soda; God knows Dib was always offering, but every time it was I don't really drink soda or I'm deathly allergic to chocolate or no thanks, I just ate, even when he'd been mooning over her all day at school and he knew for a fact that no, she hadn't.

But hey, she might've just been anorexic, right? She might have been one of those cool kids who get those fashionable diseases in grade school, years before everybody else starts sticking their fingers down their throats. She might have been a member of a cult that didn't eat anything but nails and live mice. She might have lost a few fingers in a tragic encounter with a belt sander. It would've been better than what she really was.

Better for Dib, anyway. I didn't really care.

The weirdest thing, though, was that she seemed—smarter than other people. I was only ten, but I'd already resigned myself to living in a world of morons; so long as I had a slice of pizza and my Game Slave 2, I could take or leave them as I pleased. But she was different.

She could be as stupid as the rest of them, when she was playing that part – I saw it happen more than once, how she would gauge a crowd, and the glint would vanish from her eyes like helium sucked out of a balloon – but she was sharp at the edges, almost flashing. She saw things other people were too blind to see. There seemed an uncommon depth to her thoughts.

Of course, anyone who loses to Zim must've had her brain beaten in with a cement block, so I guess she wasn't that different. Maybe she wasn't as smart as she seemed. Maybe she was too smart for her own good. In any case, I noticed her, because she was the only feature of my social landscape who wasn't as dumb as a fencepost.

And because she was around all the time. I have an extraordinarily narrow window of enthusiasm, and I like it that way – but when something gets that close to you, it becomes your business, whether you want it to or not. When it's watching your TV, and sitting on your couch, and tossing out charmingly noncommittal witticisms in a vaguely British accent when your brother makes passes at it—it's your business.

There were a good few weeks there, between when she showed up and when things went sour, but I only really spoke to her once. It was one afternoon after school, while she and Dib were monopolizing the living room – she was camped out on our couch with her cat, some stupid movie was paused on the TV screen, and he was in the kitchen making popcorn she wouldn't eat. I fixed her with a scowl.

"Can I help you?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. The cat bared its teeth and hissed.

"Yeah. You could get off my couch."

"That's not very hospitable of you." If anything, she settled further into the cushions, draping one arm over the cat's back. "You could come and hang out with us, you know. That wouldn't kill you, would it?"

"I don't want to hang out with you. I want my living room back."

She sort of sniffed. "Well. There's just no talking to you, is there?"

I glared up at her, sitting there with that smug half-smile on her face, occupying my couch like it was enemy territory (which it sort of was, even if I didn't fully know it then). She might have been smarter than other people, but in that moment, she was twice as annoying. "What are you doing here?"

She glanced at the still screen. "Watching Intestines of War, apparently."

"Yeah. What are you really doing here?"

The cat's eyes narrowed to red slits, its tail switching threateningly behind it. Or it was supposed to be threatening, I guess; I wasn't exactly pissing my panties. "What I'm really doing," she said evenly, looking me dead in the eyes, "is relaxing on your lovely little couch, about to watch this lovely little movie with your lovely little brother."

"Dib's my older brother."

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever."

With characteristically beautiful timing, Dib wandered back into the living room carrying a bowl of popcorn, and climbed up onto the couch next to her. "What do you want, Gaz?" he said none too sweetly, frowning at me. "I told you, we're watching a movie. You can't have the TV."

"I was just leaving."

"Want some popcorn?" he asked her as I headed for the kitchen. "It's really g—aAH!" As I passed him, I grabbed the rim of the bowl and flipped it up into his face, dumping the popcorn all over his big stupid head. "Hey!" I heard him wail at my back. "What'd you do that for?"

I just snorted and tuned him out.

So she turned out to be an alien, bent on turning my planet into her poobahs' personal cookie jar. Go figure. It wasn't what I'd have guessed, but then again, I wasn't in the business of guessing. In the end, all her cleverness came to nothing, except a few hours' entertainment and a new project for Dib; she crashed and burned just like everyone else who thought being smart would get you anywhere.

And in the end, I was an instrument of her destruction, if only in a small and unexpected way. If only because, if she did slurp Earth dry like a giant Suckmonkey, there was a good chance my pizza and my Game Slave 2 wouldn't make it out intact. If only because I had nothing better to do.

Unlike her, I understand just how little intelligence actually means in the world, but sometimes I do wish people were smart enough to appreciate what I did for them that day. I mean, I sacrificed. I'm pretty sure that stupid robot gave me PTSD.

It might've been interesting, had she stuck around longer than she did. But I was sick of aliens. I mean, if little green bug-people were going to swarm the planet, why did they all have to land where I lived? For that matter, why did they all have to go to my school? And if everything Dib was always jabbering about was real, like she and Zim were, why was it only them? Why couldn't we have had some werewolves or some vampires, just to mix things up? Yeah, vampires. Vampires would've been fun.

Anyway, there were no vampires. Just frickin' aliens. One less frickin' alien, after she was gone. One less body taking up space on my couch. And one less blip of weirdness on my radar, which I guess was good.