It was as normal a day as Skool could get. The lunch food still had a life of its own, Ms. Bitters still was the profit of doom and gloom, and Dib and Zim still wanted to see the other in incredible pain. That is, it was normal until spirits of the dammed and a red phone rose out of Ms. Bitters's desk. Stopping her chant of "doom, doom, doom", she snatched it in her claw-like grasp.
"What! You'll pay for this!" She slammed the phone down and it sank into her desk once more.
"Class, despite the over-crowding in the skool, your principle is placing a new hopeless appendage to the student body in this class."
A tall, lanky girl with bright blue eyes and strawberry blond hair that was pulled into a pony tail stepped into the room, looking over everyone as if drinking in the details. She wore a small spike of crystal around her neck and was stroking it with a finger as if comforting herself. When she saw Zim, Dib swore that for a second she looked angry, but it might have been a trick of the light.
"Hello. My name is Mir. I have never been to America before and am not familiar with your customs," she spoke in an unidentifiable, pretty accent.
"You!" pointed to a child next to Dib."You're being sent to the underground classrooms."
Mir looked a little shocked to see the screaming student fall below the floor but she took the seat anyway. Dib glanced at her as Ms. Bitters begin her doom chant.
"Hey, you know that green kid over there?" Dib whispered."He's an alien and he wants to take over the Earth!"
To his surprise, Mir didn't call him crazy. She simply said, "Do you have any proof?"
Dib looked hopeful. He might have finally found someone actually who believed him. "No, he and his robot keep destroying anything I get, but I can show you. Watch this!"
Dib glared at Zim, who was working on some blueprint. He began his classic tirade.
"ZIM! Don't think I don't know what you're planning, alien scum! You'll never get your filthy claws on Earth! Never!"
"You are as dim as the Dull-witted Gaskwegesplorch if you believe you can foil Zim's ingenious plan, filthy little worm baby! I AM NORMAL!" Zim shouted, standing on his desk and shaking his gloved fist at Dib.
The classroom suddenly went dark and a growling Ms. Bitters melted out of the shadows."Dib! You're annoying. Get back to your desk."
Knowing that there was no point in arguing, Dib grudgingly plopped into his desk and glared at Zim as he smiled his evil zipper-toothed smirk. Mir just watched everything with a curios amusement.
"You see what I have to put up with!" Dib ranted as he walked home with Gaz, who was buried in her video game, and Mir."It's almost as if the human race WANTS to be concurred! I mean come on!"
"I agree with you that this Zim guy is odd, but I have met odd people in my life," Mir shrugged."Do you have any facts? And I don't mean a picture or a video. Those can be faked pretty easily."
"Well, I do know where his base is and I have Tak's ship in my garage," Dib said thoughtfully," but other than that all I have is pictures."
"Tak?" Mir asked cocking her head to one side.
"Oh just another of Zim's species that tried to pump out all the Earth's magma and replace it with snacks as an offering to their leaders. Did you know that they're just taller than everyone else?"
"That's stupid."
"I know! And Zim thought it was stupid when he heard that we vote for our leaders! Choosing your own leaders is WAY better than having the position filled by someone taller than you."
Gaz growled, "If you don't shut up and let me finish these last ten levels, I will make you wish you had acid for blood instead of having a sister."
"I guess I'll see you at school tomorrow," Dib, wary of his sister, said."You don't want to have Gaz carry out her threat."
"Okay then, Dib. See you tomorrow," Mir waved good-bye to her friend as she turned down a street.
Mir was not greeted by happy parents when she got home, but that didn't surprise her. Casually she stepped into her room and closed the door after making sure no one was looking. She walked through a pulsing plasma screen.
"Glad to be out of that," she said." Holograms make me itch."
The next day, during lunch, Dib was busy explaining to Mir all about the paranormal.
"I've always been interested in paranormal investigating, but the only one who ever believed me was Tak and when I found that she was an alien, I figured she was probably believing me to gain my trust or something," Dib said.
"How many aliens have you met?" Mir asked.
"Not that many, really," Dib admitted, embarrassed.
Mir's eyes widened and she smiled. "I've got a good idea. Do you know what Zim's next plan is?"
"Not really, why?" Dib said, not knowing what she was getting at.
"Well, it's Friday, no? And this skool let's out on Saturday and Sunday, right?"Mir said while Dib nodded. "We could sneak into his base and find them out and stop it before it is too late!"
"Hey! That's a great idea. Why didn't I think of that?" Dib asked himself.
"By what you told me, you know a lot about his defenses and I'm the best when it comes to remaining hidden. You could even put in spy cameras!"
"Yeah! I've got some stealth suits my dad made! They're in my room! I'll give you one when we walk home from school so that you know where my house is. We'll meet there Saturday at sunset to sneak into the alien's house!" Dib cheered.
"It's settled than, partner," Mir shook the grinning boy's hand and walked away to the skool library.
"Partner," Dib sighed happily.
That night, Dib lay snoring on his bed when a soft green light filtered through his window. It woke him and he groped the nightstand, looking for his glasses. When they were planted somewhat crookedly on his face, he squinted out the window only to be caught in the tractor beam of a crystal-shaped alien craft. He was unable to move as he was hoisted into the ship. Somehow it reminded him of something.
Suddenly his memory was brought back to him in shocking detail. This was the same ship he had been taken aboard in when he was a baby.
Just like in his youth, Dib was suspended in the strange beam aboard the ship that somehow made him drowsy. Somehow, he fought the urge to sleep and he tried to listen to the strange, iridescent alien that was pacing on its backward-kneed legs, swishing its blue, feathered tail, as it looked at various screens.
"Computer, the subject seems to have adapted to the slight DNA changes that were installed earlier. He is less than one percent Celestian, and the rest of his body has adapted to the changes to his brain," the creature said in an oddly familiar voice." The only apparent change is in his eyesight. It is perfect in the Celestian standards which is slightly lower than human's slandered."
"Collecting data. Data download complete. Locating next subject. Subject located. Injecting current subject with dormancy liquid," The computer droned.
That was all Dib could hear because at the moment, an opaque liquid was injected into him and he immediately feel asleep.
Dib awoke with his heart pounding in his chest. Was he really abducted again or was it all just a dream like the one Zim made up? He shook his head. His memories were all foggy and unclear. Maybe he would feel better after a shower.
After being beaten by Gaz again for using all the hot water, Dib gave up on trying to clear his mind. That was when he saw the sun begin to dip under the horizon.
"Agg! I'mgonnabelateI'mgonnabelate!" Dib rushed to put on his clothes and suit as he grabbed one of his dad's Super Toast things and a soda for energy.
He was almost out the door when he realized that Mir was talking to his father in the kitchen. He listened as his dad began to bore Mir.
"Fascinating," Mir said without sounding like it at all."Oh there you are, Dib. Come on let's go."
"Son, remember," Professor Membrane said. "Be back before midnight and if anyone offers you candy, run away."
"Dad, I don't think strangers will be my worst problem when I'm sneaking into an alien base," Dib said.
"My poor, insane son," Membrane said, shaking his head."You go have fun now."
When they were a few houses away from Zim's base, Dib showed Mir how to activate the suit.
"It will distort the light around you so you look kind of invisible," He explained. "Also, it will keep the gnomes in the front from recognizing you. Just don't get wet."
Mir watched the distorted Dib carefully step onto the blind spots in the gnome field. When he got to the front door, she quickly mimicked his path and joined him. Slipping into the unlocked base, they passed a drooling GIR as they jumped into the trash can elevator and descended into the depths of the base.
"We'll have to be extra careful now," Dib whispered. "I don't know much about the defenses down here."
Mir nodded and realized he couldn't see her. "I agree. Now where could we find a vulnerable place to hack into his computer?"
"No idea what so ever," Dib said as the elevator came to a stop.
"Well, I guess we better AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGG!" Mir screamed as she stepped without looking into an electric field. Her scream rose to a pitch so high, Dib couldn't hear it but it caused all the technology around them to malfunction. Both of their stealth suits flickered off, but Mir herself strangely continued to flicker.
With a thud, Mir fell to the floor unconscious, but she wasn't human any more. The hologram that Dib knew to be Mir was no more. Instead, an iridescent creature taller than average humans with thin, pointed ears, quivering, blue, feather-like mane that started at the tip of her nose and ended at the tip of her tail, powerful legs with two sets of knees that made her legs look like lightning bolts, a bulging throat on her long, thin neck, three clawed foot, and four long, thin fingers lay before him. It was the same creature that had abducted him twice in his life time. Dib was so shocked that he didn't notice the metal claws extend from the ceiling until it was too late.