A/N: A nice reviewer pointed that I should have posted this the crossover section. Sorry about that! After looking at the IZ/JTHM and IZ/JV areas (which seem pretty similar?) I'm going to go with the first one. I'll give everyone today to see this note and then I'll switch it over tomorrow morning. So for future updates, either follow the story or just check the IZ/JTHM crossover category. Thanks!

So anyway, on with the first full chapter!

Disclaimer: I do not own Invader Zim, Squee, JTHM or any related franchises. I also do not own an essential oil diffuser from Scentsy. Why are they so expensive? (And why do I still want it anyway?!)


Chapter One: An Inconvenient Project

agent_mothman: gaz! i had the craziest dream last night!

v0x3lr0t: Stop messaging me about stupid things, Dib. Are you going to be home for dinner?

agent_mothman: no i don't think so. i need to go the library! i mean, this dream was CRAZY! it felt so real!

v0x3lr0t: Dad is coming home tonight. You can go to the stupid library tomorrow.

agent_mothman: sorry gaz! not tonight! gotta do some research! there's something different about this dream. maybe it's a premonition! do you think i might be psychic?

v0x3lr0t: You're not psychic. You're just dumb.

agent_mothman: well I'm going to get to the bottom of this!

v0x3lr0t: Are you coming home or what?

v0x3lr0t: …Dib?

v0x3lr0t: DIB!

v0x3lr0t: … I really hate you.

XXX

There are rumors that in other classrooms, in other "skools" where the word is actually spelt correctly, children whisper to each other during class.

But those children didn't have Miss Bitters as a teacher.

Nobody knows where she came from or how she became a teacher in the first place. I have a few theories myself, but the only thing I know is that she didn't get the job because she loved children. Her heart was as withered as her skin. No, it was impossible that she came here- so they must have just built the skool around her. This was her classroom and had always been her classroom.

We were just here for her amusement.

One afternoon, I forgot that. Do you see that kid sitting at the end of the first the row? You know, the kid sketching in his notebook, completely oblivious to the dark figure gliding down the aisle like a shark that had just caught a whiff of blood?

That kid was me.

"Dib!" A voice hissed behind me. Miss Bitters stood over me with a snarl. "Creative expression in educational institutions was banned years ago. Do you want to be thrown into the punishment pit again?"

"Not really." I admitted.

"Then give me the picture. I will burn it as an appeasement to the skool board."

Reluctantly- since it really was kind of good- I gave it to her. She gazed at it and, just for a second, an expression crossed her face.

"See me after class." she said and, just as quietly as she had spoken, set the drawing back down on my desk. It happened so fast that I could only stare at the picture in stunned silence.

Miss Bitters returned to her perch at the front of the classroom and peered at us, like a vulture examining its prey for any smallest sign of dehydration.

"Now," she creaked, "I have an important announcement."

The other kids straightened up at this, their parched brains eager for a drop of something interesting.

"As you know, our classroom has been infested with a rare breed of man-eating termites. Though I advocated for classes to continue, the skool is going to be shut down for a week while extermination takes place."

A round of cheers erupted through the classroom. This only aggravated Miss Bitters.

"SILENCE!" she shrieked. And of course, there was. "To ensure that you do not enjoy this vacation, I have decided to assign a large, inconvenient project. As well you know, you are all extremely ignorant of anything that doesn't directly affect your lives. In an effort to make you just slightly aware that there is a world around you, you will prepare a report on a local news story. You will gather articles on your assigned topic, conduct interviews and type up a report. If it's semi-coherent, you won't have to repeat the sixth grade."

Zita raised her hand. "We're in eighth grade!"

"To increase the inconvenience," Miss Bitters continued, undeterred. "I have also decided to make this a group project. Select your partner immediately."

My heart sunk into my stomach. Almost as soon as I turned around, groups already had their desks pushed together like they had been like that the whole time. Only two desks were still single.

Mine.

And the empty one at the end of the row.

"Zim is absent," Miss Bitters continued, "so Dib will be his partner for the project."

"Do I have to be Zim's partner?!" I protested, "They're in a group of three!" Vaguely, I waved in the direction of three girls whose desks had fused together somehow.

Miss Bitters growled. "Dib will be Zim's partner."

"But-!"

"Dib. Zim. Partners."

How could I argue with that? As I collapsed back into my seat, scattered chuckles and whispers rippled across the room. I glared at all of them and then glared extra hard at the desk at the end of the row, as if there was actually somebody there to glare at.

Miss Bitters hissed to regain the class's attention. "Does everyone understand?" A few kids nodded. "Good! Come up to my desk to receive your assignment and then go away."

As partners walked up to the desk hand-in-hand, chatting about how much they loved teamwork, I shoved my books back into my bag. The drawing, however, I carefully folded in half and slipped in between two books.

"Make sure you work together on the project!" Miss Bitters snarled after the group in front of me, as they were walking out. "I can smell teamwork!" Then, her rattlesnake gaze fixed on me. "You and Zim will be working on the story about the serial killer in the neighboring city of Mount Pleasant."

Of course, I knew the story. Just about everyone did. The serial killer who could kill people in broad daylight and walk away without getting caught was almost as viral as that picture of a kitten and a puppy sharing a sombrero. Well, almost.

"Don't you think that's a little dark for kids?" I pointed out.

"It'll be good for you." Then she pointed at a wheelbarrow full of papers in the corner of the room. "That's Zim's homework. Make sure he gets it."

I grumbled a half-hearted "yes, Miss Bitters" and trudged over to the wheelbarrow. It creaked as I tugged on it and I told myself that if it broke, stupid Zim could come and deal with it.

As I began to push the rusted piece of junk out the door, Miss Bitters said: "And Dib?"

I turned around to find her gazing at me.

"Stop drawing it." she said, "If you give it form, you're giving it power."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. For one, surreal moment I wondered if I was asleep and that this was just a weird dream. But by the way chills ran up my arms, leaving little trails of goosebumps behind them, I knew this was real.

I fumbled for words. "Do… do you know what it is?"

"Of course." A long silence followed and her eyes narrowed at me. "Why haven't you left yet?!"

"Come on! Can't you give me any advice?!"

She paused for a long time and finally, she said. "Remember that this is a group project. You must work together."

She stressed must like it was the most important word in the universe, as if it deserved to be etched in stone and made into a family heirloom that would be passed down from generation to generation.

It took me a second to process this. "That's advice for the project! I was talking about-"

"I've already said far too much. Get out!"

"But-!"

"OUT!"

With anyone else, I might have refused but even I, a fearless paranormal investigator, knew better than to annoy Miss Bitters. So I gave the wheelbarrow a shove and forced it through the door. As the wheelbarrow and I screeched down the hallway, terrified thoughts whirled through my mind. What did she know? What was this thing? Should I be scared of it?

And yet, only one thought really worried me.

I have to see Zim again.

XXX

About two months ago, at the unceremonious time of three in the morning, the doorbell rang. It had awoken me from a nightmare and it took a few seconds after opening the door to register what I was seeing.

Zim stood on my porch, without his disguise.

The lack of his wig and contacts didn't surprise me. I had seen Zim like this- green skinned and red-eyed with antennae twitching like a mutant ant- so many times that it was unbelievable I still didn't have a clear picture to send into Mysterious Mysteries. No, the surprising thing was that he didn't push me aside to get in. He just stood there, his weird red eyes glowing in the darkness.

"Uh, hi?" I said, because what else could I really say?

At that moment, I noticed the rain. It wasn't more than a drizzle, but each drop left little tendrils of smoke where it meet his skin. Beyond a slight shiver, he didn't even react to it.

"Can I come in?" He asked. Not demanded or commanded, he just asked. I wondered if this was just another strange dream.

"I guess." I let him walk past me and then shut the door behind him. "What do you want?"

The answer didn't come right away. He stood there in the hall, rubbing the cold from his arms as he regarded the picture hanging on the wall. It was an Easter photo taken when I was a kid. I was trying to pull the head of the mall's Easter Bunny, while Gaz had just punched him in the stomach. Dad posed for camera with a peace sign.

"Zim," I repeated. This time he turned around. "What do you want? In case you haven't noticed, it's three o'clock in the-"

"I require the use of your telescope!"

I sighed. It was too early to argue with him. "Go ahead. You know how to use it."

When I began to walk away, he seized the sleeve of my shirt. "There... there is something I want you to see."

I groaned. The vivid nightmare was starting to escape me now and there were still details I needed to record. But there was something insistent in Zim's voice and I wondered if this was a fate-of-the-world situation. So I led him up the long winding stairs to the attic- or The Observatory, as Dad calls it- where the controls for the telescope stretched along the back wall.

Zim pressed a couple buttons like a master pianist trying a new piano and then, satisfied with whatever he had learned from that, began to work. He made a couple adjustments and took a quick look in the scope.

"This planet is horrible!" He snapped. The quiet patter of rain against the window had almost lulled me to sleep and I jolted awake. "Why do you let that condensation clog up the sky?!"

"Umm," it took me a moment to realize what he was talking about. "Do you mean the clouds? I'm not personally responsible for those y'know, they just kind of-"

"The sky is clear on Irk," The viciousness in his voice dropped away. "If you look up at night, you see can all of those worlds just begging to be conquered. When I was a smeet, I used to sneak up to the surface and look at all of the stars, trying to guess which one would be mine to destroy."

I like to do that too, I almost told him. Not the destroying part, just the looking out the sky part. Something about space had always filled me with a sense of adventure. It was the feeling that somewhere far away from here, there were mysteries upon mysteries to be discovered.

But since I try not to agree with Zim more than I have to, I didn't mention that. "What are going to show me?"

He fiddled with the controls again and took one, long look in the telescope. Then, he beckoned to me and offered the lens. Curiosity piqued, I leaned forward to look.

I could see a red planet. At first, I thought it might be Mars until I saw that there wasn't a single cloud swirling around it.

"You are the first human to have the honor of seeing the Irken homeworld." Zim said, with the same reverent tone that most people saved for church. "Most Irkens have taken up residence on conquered planets, but the smeeting factories are still there. If you look closely-"

"Is that why you woke me up? To reminisce about your stupid planet? What's wrong with you, Zim?!"

He flinched like I had just slapped him. "I assumed since you call yourself a paraplegic-!"

"Paranormal investigator!"

"That's what I said, fool! I assumed since you are- err, whateverthatwordwas - that you would be slightly interested!"

He was right about that. I should have been asking him hundreds of questions, but all I could feel was… annoyance. My nightmare was fading fast and all I could think about was drawing it.

"I have more important things to do so just get to the point already!"

There was silence for a moment. He stared at me, with a wounded look that I had never seen before. You would have thought I had pulled out an Irken to English dictionary and called him every profane word his language had to offer.

"This was a mistake!" Returning to the console, he began furiously pressing buttons. I knew he was deleting the coordinates. "How could I be so stupid?!"

Then he stormed past me, running down the stairs like Cinderella when she realized the time. Baffled by his extreme reaction, I chased after him. He was already in the living room by the time I caught up.

"Hey!" I seized his arm at the doorway. "What's going on with you?!"

He tore it out of my grasp. "Don't touch me! How DARE you touch me!"

"Why are you freaking out?"

"SHUT UP! GO AWAY!"

"It's my house..."

"I hate you!" He spat. Now that he was out on the porch, his skin sizzled in the rain like oil on a frying pan. "I can't believe that I almost-! Just... just leave me alone!"

Then he stormed off into the night.

"You came here!" I called after him.

But the darkness said nothing. So, shrugging off the weird incident, I went back up to my room and spent the rest of the night finishing my drawing. I figured when Zim came to skool the next day, I could get more information out of him.

But Zim didn't return to skool that day.

Or the next day.

Every morning at roll call, I kept my eye on the door- expecting him to show up. But days added up into weeks and he never came.

What had he been trying to tell me? I wondered, every once in awhile. Like everyone else in the class, though, I soon forgot about him. The nightmares had gotten worse by this point and all of my spare energy- of which I had less and less of every day- had been focused on dream research. But on rare occasion, when I caught sight of his desk, an image flashed into my mind:

Zim, burning in the rain.

XXX

If it wasn't for the project, would I have ever seen Zim again? Maybe, maybe not- I never had the opportunity to find out. With a mission and a wheelbarrow full of homework, I found myself on the familiar trek to Zim's house once again.

You know which house it is.

That green and purple monstrosity with a field of lawn gnomes and a flag that says "yay Earth!"? You've seen it. I mean, how could you not? And, while you might have thought it was a bit odd, what you don't know if that there is a huge alien base underneath with large rooms that could fit telescopes, spaceships and any sort of diabolical experiments Zim happened to be working on at the time. I've done several runs of the labyrinth tunnels and yet the amount I've managed to map feels like barely a tenth of what actually lies beneath the surface.

I'll bet you never even noticed.

It felt weird, returning to the house after about two months of not seeing it. It felt even weirder to push a wheelbarrow full of papers up the narrow walkway to the front door, but that was because pushing a wheelbarrow full of papers around anywhere is a pretty weird experience. The lawn gnomes turned to follow me as I trudged up the path, wheelbarrow creaking. Their eyes flashed green to indicate that I was an intruder, yellow to give me a chance to say my prayers and red to incinerate me with lasers.

"I'm here to deliver Zim's homework." I explained, pausing to wipe the sweat off my forehead. "He's been absent from skool."

The gnomes turned away from me and their eyes mellowed into a wary green again. Then the front door opened and Zim's robot parents loomed over me. "Oh, look." The robot mom cooed, getting way too close to my face. "Our son has a little visitor!"

She sparked and her entire body twitched. I tried not to look into her eyes, which were rolling in different directions, and focused on pushing the wheelbarrow up the front step instead.

The father gave a hearty chuckle. "Yes, I remember my first girlfriend. What great times we had together!"

They wheeled aside to let me in. Just after I made it through the door, the wheelbarrow collapsed in a heap. In front of me, a small silver robot sat on a purple couch, transfixed by the television. A tiny moose floated beside him.

"Angry Monkey Show?" I asked, stepping over the remains of the wheelbarrow.

GIR nodded. His shimmering blue eyes were glued to the snarling monkey. "This is my favorite one."

"You know it's just the same footage every time, right?" No response. It's not like I expected one or anything. "Is Zim home?"

Minimoose squeaked and floated away, which I took that as a sign to follow him. We passed the kitchen and came to stop at the inappropriately placed toilet in the corner of the room. With a sigh, I climbed into the toilet and Minimoose landed on my shoulder.

We descended into the base.

As glimpses from the elevator revealed rooms I had never seen before, I did feel a slight rush of excitement. Zim's house hadn't become so common-place that I had forgotten it was a real alien base- a very affirmation of the fact that aliens existed at all. I knew quite a bit about the Irken race from my investigation of Zim but there was still so much more to learn. They were much more technologically advanced than humans and I couldn't even imagine what sort of society they had. It's laughable how inferior we are to them, actually. In that way, Zim's enormous ego had some merit.

While I was thinking this, the elevator reached its destination and the doors opened.

Angry shrieks of frustration and smoke flooded in: "Stupid, horrible pile of stupid horribleness! DO NOT DEFY THE AMAZING ZIM!"

I rolled my eyes: technologically advanced or not, Zim was still an idiot.

As the smoke cleared, it took a second for me register what I was seeing. Zim was hunched over a curved table with a screwdriver, grumbling to himself, four metal prongs sticking out of his back. A metal arm hung from the ceiling above him and nestled in its metallic hand, like a fragile egg that could so very easily be crushed, was the source of Zim's entire existence.

His PAK.

At the sound of the doors opening, Zim spun around. "Dib-worm!" He slammed the screwdriver on the table. "How DARE you sneak into my base!"

"Sneak isn't really the word I would use." But I had said it too slowly, too hesitantly. Zim followed my eyes to the PAK and returned my stare with a glare.

"We're done for today!" He snarled to the computer. The arm holding the PAK obediently returned it, skillfully snapping it back into place like a kid who was an expert at Legos. Then, without even a glance back at me, Zim began clearing off his workbench. "Why are you still here, human speck? Begone with you!"

I sighed in relief. Zim seemed to be back to his normal, screechy self. Perhaps whatever weird thing he was going through had passed and we could go back to our usual mutual hatred of each other. "So, we have a class project to do. We have to research-"

"This is no time for "PROJECTS"! Now get out of my base and leave Ziiiim to his work!"

"Was the third person really necessary?"

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Yes."

"Okay, well, I'm not leaving until I tell you about the project. We've been assigned that homicidal maniac story, so I figured we can go to Mount Pleasant tomorrow. They have a library, so we can go there to research-"

"No."

He had said it with such finality, like he had just staked a stop sign right in the middle of our conversation. I came to a stumbling halt.

"No?" I asked. "Did you say no?"

"Have your auditory nubs stopped functioning, worm baby? The answer is no! I will do this "project", but I will not go there."

"You mean Mount Pleasant?" I pressed, but he said nothing. "Why? I mean, yeah, there's a homicidal maniac but we're not going to be there long and whoever it is doesn't seem to target kids-"

"I-" He repeated. "Am. Not. Going."

This was my cue to argue with him, but I was surprised by how serious he looked. As soon as I had mentioned the town, he stiffened up and his antennae had flattened back, like a dog's ears when a stranger approached.

"Are…" I searched for the words. "Are… you scared?"

"Scared?! ZIM?! Do not make me laugh, pig-beast!"

"Then why?"

He said nothing for a long while. But then he admitted, with great reluctance: "There is… something… there that should not be. Regarding this town, there are senses your inferior human mind simply does not possess. I, being a superior species, can detect a negative presence. It's like some sort of horrible stink. It's… overwhelming."

My heart beat against my chest. This looked like the beginning of a case. Since the nightmares and the drawings had been consuming most of my time, I hadn't been following the homicidal maniac story that closely. I mean, serial killers were cool but being a paranormal investigator, they weren't really my area of interest. But perhaps this story was more relevant to me than I thought?

"Is it paranormal?!" I asked, excitedly.

"I do not care what it is! I will have nothing to do with it! Now be gone before I, err, eat your giant head!"

In retrospect, I should have listened to him. But at the time, how could I? A legitimate mystery stood before me and I had an actual alien agreeing that there was something supernatural, or at least strange, involved. And I was the first person to have a scoop on it!

It was petty, I'll admit. But you can't blame me, can you?

I crossed my arms. "First, we both know you're not going to do that. And second, if you don't do the project, you're going to fail. You haven't been to skool in a week and then failing? You're not doing very well with your mission, Zim."

It happened again. That same look he had that night in The Observatory returned, but now I could see what it was. Pain. Whatever I just said had hit some sort of weak spot. And so, I did what I always did when I found a weakness in Zim.

I mercilessly exploited it.

"Did you forget about your mission?" I asked, with strategic casualness. He watched me as I strolled over the worktable and began to examine each of every one of the instruments scattered across it. "It's been a couple months now and you haven't done anything to maintain your cover. You haven't even been to skool!"

Taking a screwdriver, I turned it over it my hand and then held it up to the light so the metal gleamed.

"If you start failing, they're going to start investigating." I continued, with a wicked grin. "They'll want to talk to your parents. Remember how you barely got through parent-teacher night? We both know that they won't survive an intensive investigation. The skool board will figure out they're robots and then it won't be long until they figure out what you are."

I advanced on him, screwdriver in hand like it was a knife.

"After that," I pointed it at his heart. "It's the autopsy table."

I poked him with it. He flinched, but didn't devolve into a screaming mess the way I hoped he would.

"You're lying!" He hissed, with an obvious lack of confidence.

"Maybe. You don't have to believe me. Actually, I hope you don't. I'd rather fail a project than get to miss out on watching you get sliced open on a table. It's your choice, really."

This was the part where he would snatch the screwdriver back, annoyed, and agree to work with me on the project. In fact, he would insist, he LOVED projects because he was not an alien but a totally normal human earth child. Then we would take turns insulting each other before he ordered his computer to toss me outside onto the lawn, where the gnomes would start blasting me with lasers as I made a mad dash for the sidewalk.

But none of that happened.

Instead he stood there, hesitating, staring at something over my shoulder. I followed his gaze and for the first time noticed that a diagram of his PAK was projected on a screen behind me. A flashing red spot in center of the PAK illuminated the uncertainty on his face. He seemed to have forgotten I was even there.

"Zim!" I slammed the screwdriver back on the table and his gaze snapped back to me. "Just make a decision already! I haven't slept in weeks, so I'm not exactly in the mood to argue with you."

His antenna pricked with curiosity. "You can't sleep?"

"Don't change the subject! Are you going to be my partner for the project or not?"

"Partner?"

I could have slapped my forehead. Were we even having the same conversation? Sometimes, it was amazing that Zim spoke fluent English because he didn't seem to understand anything that I- or anyone else for that matter- actually said to him.

"It's a group project." I reminded him. "You and I? We're a group. We have to work together or we're going to end up in the punishment pit! Remember what happened last time?"

"The bees." He shivered.

"Right. Neither of us want to experience that again. So let's just agree to cooperate long enough to get it done and then we can move on with our lives."

Zim said nothing for a long time. I thought of that night he stood on my porch, in the rain, asking permission to come inside. He looked up at me, like he had so many things to say but couldn't think of a single one.

"Very well." He said, averting his gaze. "We will do this horrible project and be done with it. We shall… we shall be a group. Truce?"

He offered me a hand to shake.

"Whatever." I pocketed my hands instead. "Just be ready when I come tomorrow."

What happened next caught me surprise. Fire leapt into his eyes and, for a single second, I thought he was going to attack me. Instead he just ground his teeth and pointed at the door. "Get out of my sight!" When I hesitated, he shouted: "NOW!"

A bit rattled, I obeyed. My heart thumped in my chest as I forced myself to walk, though I wanted to run, into the elevator. The doors opened automatically and as I turned around to press the button to go back upstairs, I saw him sink into a chair.

Just before the doors closed, he leaned forward like he was about to be sick.

I spent the elevator ride replaying that last, puzzling scene in my head. But by the time I had surfaced in Zim's mismatched kitchen, I had already forgotten about it. That might surprise you. You would think that two, obsessive arch-enemies would care about each other on some level.

Well, you're wrong.

There's a fine line between enemy and friend, I'll give you that, but at the end of the day there's still a crucial difference. If Zim had the opportunity to kill me, he would. And me? Well, I hadn't been in that situation yet. But if I'm being honest with myself, I think I would too.

And that's the difference.


A/N: And on that depressing note, Dreamtime on Friday!