Jaramee put his legs up on the moldy coffee table in the break room. This diary was actually really interesting. It was like one of those murder stories he used to read when he had time.

He flipped to the last bookmark:

I didn't write for about a day and a half and they stopped giving me the good soup. The relatively good soup, anyhow.

For the sake of my taste buds, I'm going to write again. I believe the last thing I wrote was Zim and the TV conning me into staying.

So I slept on the couch, and I had to use my sweater as a pillow. I was only wearing a bra underneath, so I really should have been more embarrassed when Zim showed up the next morning. But he didn't give a crap, and at this point I was past caring about decency.

He informed me that I was supposed to stay out of his labs for today, because he was doing something. And that I should disregard any screaming because Zim is amazing and can handle it himself.

That was suspicious, but I didn't care at all.

I was watching one of those movies where somebody kills a lot of people, usually teenagers. I don't even remember what it was called or what actors were in it, but it was predictable and familiar. I used to watch those movies with my aunt before she died. She always made me promise not to tell my dad, but I doubt he would have cared anyway.

So, as predicted, Zim started screaming and carrying on. I actually didn't distinguish it from the movie sounds at first, but the thing ended and he was still screaming. It didn't sound like typical Zim-screaming, more like actual pain.

I went into the labs because I thought it might be funny to watch, but it was actually pretty creepy.

Zim was lying on this table, next to some broken glass and some kind of purplish liquid. At first I thought it was blood, but then I remembered Dib obsessing over the fact that Irken blood was blue, like it would help him prevent the downfall of the planet.

There wasn't any actual blood in the room, but Zim was shrieking like a banshee and writhing around on the table. He was about six inches taller than he previously had been, and his skin was stretched tight over his body like he was stuffed into a sausage casing. His bones were all jutting out like they might cut his skin, and from the screaming it sounded like they were about to.

For whatever reason, I thought he had taken some kind of weird Jekyll-and-Hyde type of potion, and that he was going to start calling himself Tim and being nice to everyone.

I was very wrong.

After about ten minutes he got over himself and quieted down and sat up on the table. He yelled at me for being in his labs without permission, and he tried to stand up, and that's when I remembered that weird growth spurt he had last year. Grew a foot in two weeks. I guess he had some kind of serum that extends your skeleton, but not the rest of you. How has he not accidentally killed himself?

So he spent the next few days on the couch whining and eating far too much. He was honestly acting like a pregnant lady. He kept eating this weird alien snack food that kind of tasted like fish, but with sprinkles on it. It was even worse than the 'bad' soup.

Speaking of the bad soup, I'm going to continue writing later.

xxx

I asked him about the serum thing later, and he said it was as a form of disguise. They were looking for someone much shorter than he was now. I pointed out that he still had green skin – you've got to admit that's pretty noticeable – and he said everyone on Earth was too filthy and idiotic to notice. Which was true.

After a few more stupid slasher movies, Zim informed me that I needed some form of disguise too. I severely did not want to do whatever he had done to himself, because it looked incredibly painful. After some loud arguing, I resigned myself to dyeing my hair.

I coloured it black. It looked kind of scary and different, like it wasn't my face stuck onto my body. I also went out and got my eyebrow pierced. You can't really tell now, because they got rid of it once I got here, but it looked pretty cool.

After several days of altering my appearance, I looked like a totally different person. I had probably lost ten pounds since the incident, because I had completely lost all appetite for about two weeks. We used some other weird serum on my hair, so it was just past my shoulders. I had also pierced my ears a few times, but my clothes were majorly the same.

I'm only describing this because I look completely different now, and I wanted to make sure I remembered.

Some time later Zim remembered that I was supposed to be bossing him around. I tried teaching him how to fight, but all I could think of were things from that stupid self-defense class my dad made me take. Zim got kind of mad at me and informed me that he already knew how to fight. So I asked him why he hadn't managed to kill Dib, if he was so amazing, and he started calling me a liar and flailing around. I dumped half my soda on his head and left.

After I

xxx

I hadn't taken a shower in about a week, so they freaked out and assumed I was suicidal for whatever reason, and forced me to have hygiene.

After I walked out, about two hours later, Zim explained why I was really there.

He didn't need to learn how to fight (because he was Zim) he just assumed that I could help him with his next plan a bit faster than he could alone.

That was pretty weird, seeing as he hated just about all humanity, but apparently he liked my hateful nature and general disregard for my own species.

I agreed to help him out on three conditions: One, that he would manipulate his house to include a bedroom. One with a door that locked from the inside, because the couch is uncomfortable, and I like my privacy. Two, that I wouldn't just get killed off after all of this started. Three, that my dad would conveniently be out of the city when all of this started.

Eventually he explained the plan, and I shot down several of his ideas (because they were stupid), and we formed kind of step system.

Basically his plan was to burn down the city and use the ruins as a sort of base of operations. From there, he would try to keep the fires going until either he burned down the whole world, or the survivors surrendered.

His original plan was to use 'the primitive human strategy game of Rock Paper Scissors' to bet various countries with their leaders. There were all kinds of things wrong with that scenario. Mainly the fact that Zim didn't know the basic rules of Rock Paper Scissors and thought it involved bludgeoning people to death with actual rocks.

He also wanted to gain control of the planet instead of just destroying it, but from his rambles about the superiority of Irken culture, and the messages I had been eavesdropping on, that wasn't actually part of the plan.

We started working on various methods of starting fires, many of which failed. One of them actually worked, but it was really hard to control and we almost got ourselves killed.

It's pretty hard to destroy anything from beyond the grave.

We actually were fairly close before any of the murdering happened. Or at least close enough that he had long since dropped the suffix of –human from the end of my name, and just called me Gaz. It was mainly to annoy my brother, but I actually liked his company most of the time. He made me look smarter in comparison.

I guess that was the reason I was stuck with him now. It was either genuine friendship, or love that I had been informed I had. Family only gets you so far, and I really didn't care much about him. Or maybe I had just snapped.

Either way I was attempting to conquer the world with a megalomaniac bug-man, and I liked it.