It was a cold, dewy summer night. On nights like this, it would be dark and overcast, and everyone in town would be inside, playing on their GameSlave ™ 3D's and just waiting for the weather to dry up. It had been raining constantly for almost two weeks, and while it was nice for a while (all the moms had started growing flower gardens in their yards) it got tiring quickly. Any normal person would have just waited for the weather to straighten up and actually act like summer.
But Dib wasn't a normal person.
"Hey. Dib. If you fall and break your neck, can I have your laptop?"
Dib balanced precariously on top of the satellite dish on his roof. Getting there with the camera had been easier than he thought. It had just been a matter of climbing through the window that his sister was now glaring at him out of, grabbing onto the gutter, and hauling himself up to the roof.
It was staying there that was the tricky part.
His boots slipped for a second on the wet surface of the satellite and he yelped, quickly righting himself one-handed, while trying to still aim the camera. "GAZ! You're distracting me! If I don't get these pictures and EXPOSE that alien worm, he'll take over the world! I saw him doing something weird the other day...Something suspicious! I have to stop him!"
In actuality, Dib had just spied on Zim watering the flowers in his front lawn for an hour, but he wasn't going to let Gaz know that. Obviously they were some kind of EVIL flower! For alieny stuff!
Gaz had to crane her neck back just to see Dib. "Stupid. You're aware that he lives, like, maybe three blocks away? You could just walk there and take your stupid pictures." She paused, and then added, "Then I'd have the TV to myself for at least an hour."
Dib aimed the camera at the weirdly misshapen house and zoomed in the lens, capturing a few blurry photos of the creepy lawn gnomes in front. "Gaz, you know I can't do that! If he spots me, He'll be SUSPICIOUS OF ME! What kind of a good spy gets caught?!" He snapped a few more pictures. "Besides, the season finale of Ancient Secrets of Aliens N' Stuff airs later. I can't miss that."
"You're not a spy, Dib. You're a thirteen -year-old boy playing secret agent. And aren't you guys already, y'know, archenemies or whatever? Pretty sure that counts as 'suspicious activity', dummy. He's probably too stupid to even care."
Dib sputtered for a few seconds. "That- that's besides the point, Gaz."
Gaz shrugged. "Not really." She watched him, amused as he floundered with the camera for a few seconds, and the pulled her head back inside. "Later, Dib. I'm going downstairs. Oh, and I'm having a friend over soon." She popped her head back outside and glared at him coldly. "And if you do anything embarrassing, I'll punch your head into your neck so hard you'll be crapping your own teeth for a month." She ducked back in again.
Dib nodded nervously, now balancing on one foot to get a better vantage point. "Sure, Gaz."
A new though struck him, and he couldn't stop himself before blurting it out. "Hey, wait, since when did you have friends?"
She poked her head out for the last time. "That's for me to know and you to not find out." Her eyes flashed dangerously and suddenly Dib had the feeling that it would be a very good idea to focus all his attention onto the camera.
She ducked back inside Dib's room window, and for good measure she kicked the wall of his room so hard the dish wobbled, and Dib staggered for a good thirty seconds, before righting himself again.
Now that he was alone to focus, his thoughts drifted to his archenemy. Zim was possibly the most cunning, smart, worthy adversary he had ever faced. Since it was so wet outside, Dib figured that it was the perfect time to gather evidence of the alien being, well, an alien. He zoomed the lens in on one of the windows. Suddenly, a shadow flitted across the window from the inside. He zoomed in even more, holding his breath to keep the camera steady. Would it reappear? Usually when he took pictures nothing of particular interest happened in that house, except for some weird sounds and once, a muffled explosion sound coming from beneath the first floor, followed by some loud cursing.
Dib waited for a few more seconds, and at that precise moment, the front door (stolen from a men's bathroom? Dib had yet to find out.) flew open and Zim himself ran out, looking completely disheveled. His wig hung halfway on and he was breathing hard, from the looks of it. His weird robot dog soon followed through the door.
Dib could hardly contain his excitement. This was what he had been waiting for! He couldn't really hear what they were discussing, but it was probably something crazy alienish and evil! He started recording.
"GIR, I gave you SPECIFIC ORDERS to NEVER EVER EVER TOUCH MY CHOCOLATE STASH."
Zim was irritated. Not as if he wasn't usually pissed about something or the other, no matter how small, but still. He had told that dumb little bot almost a trillion million times not to eat his chocolate hoard, which he kept for STRICTLY SCIENTIFIC REASONS. Also, they tasted pretty good, for earth food scum.
He straightened his wig, attempting to look professional, but still looking completely messy. "Anyway, GIR! Because of your FOOLISHNESS, we are now LATE!"
Gir tilted his head to one side, allowing the fake eyes of his INCREDIBLY INGENIUS disguise to unfocus. He said, confused, "But, Master, you were the one making us late! You were looking for your chocolate for almost an hour…" His eyes snapped back into focus and he shrieked, "HEY! LOOKIT THAT!", pointing something perched atop the Dib-smell's house.
Dib saw the weird little robot guy pointing at him, quickly snapped a few more pictures, and then swung around the edge of the house back through his window, smacking his huge head on the sill and rolling unceremoniously to the carpet. Did he see me? Dib wondered, rushing over to his computer and plugging the SD card from the camera into the computer jack, downloading all the pictures to the hard drive in under a second. I guess it doesn't really matter. Even if he did see me, it's not like he would come all the way over here to get those pictures back.
He was flicking through the pictures, trying to find some really incriminating evidence against the green menace, when suddenly a loud, annoying pounding sounded through the house.
That must be Gaz's weirdo friend, he thought, before he could hear Gaz opening the door and saying something to the person who knocked. Whatever, she's probably gonna traumatize the poor kid within ten minutes, before sitting bolt upright, eyes wide, when he heard the stranger's response.
"YES, GAZ-HUMAN! I am here…ON TIME! So, where are those cool weapons you said I, THE MAGNIFICENT INVA- er, NORMAL PERSON-THING could have?!"