Walking into the cafeteria was its own kind of horrible. Aside from it being "Corn and Mayonnaise Day," someone somewhere had decided a food fight was in order. I barely had time to duck as a huge glop of yellow-white...something…flew over my head. "Whoa!" If I'd have known which of the children it had been, I would've shot the kid a dirty look. What kind of place IS this? I bet they don't even serve real food!

Spotting that boy, Dib, in the lunch line, I headed over to him. At least he seemed relatively normal. "Hey, you know they're throwing poisonous projectiles of doom, right?"

He smirked. "Tell me something I don't know."

"Okay," I shrugged. "The slop on your plate's still moving."

"...Aah!" Dib flung the tray into the trash where it instantly exploded, erupting in a green mushroom cloud I took great care to steer clear of.

Dib led me over to his table, and I sat down next to a girl with purple hair wearing a skull charm around her neck. She was deeply immersed in her Game Slave 2, the tray in front of her untouched. Smart girl. "Hannah, this is my sister, Gaz. She's always playing her Game Slave," he rolled his eyes good-naturedly.

"Hey, Gaz," I ventured. Grunting in annoyance, she turned her back to us, and the sound of a vampire piggy being disintegrated mingled with the noisy din of the cafeteria. "So…this Zim kid..." I scooped up a spoonful of mush and stared at it. "He's got some plan to take over the earth?"

"It doesn't make sense," he replied. "Zim's plans are always stupid, but this one… I'm not sure. He's drawing a schematic of a battle robot-"

"Wha? A what?"

"A battle robot. It would probably be sent from his leaders."

"His leaders? As in… other aliens?" I pointed to the ceiling. "Out there?!"

"Yeah, they send him all kinds of weird stuff. But the robot's so small- I don't see how it could destroy anything."

"That's weird." The mush ooze gurgled and burped at me. Gently, I set the spoon down, praying it wouldn't detonate .

"I know. I'm planning to sneak over to his base tomorrow night and see if I can blow it up. Usually, thwarting Zim's evil plans isn't that hard. He doesn't have much in the intelligence department," he smirked, tapping his temple.

"Yeah, I kind of noticed...Y'know, you have a big head for-"

"Please!" he cringed, looking slightly aggravated. "Don't…don't say that."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to upset you." An awkward silence passed.

Beep beep beep… Gaz's Game Slave continued to sound.

"Do you think…? Do you really, totally, completely believe Zim is an alien? …That we're not alone in the universe?" Did I just say that? Do I actually BELIEVE this alien business now? This is just crazy…

Just then, an inhuman scream echoed from the other side of the cafeteria. Dib and I turned to spot Zim hanging by one of the lights, swinging crazily and squealing about stinky worm babies and corn vampires.

Dib pointed. "Does that answer your question?"

"He's a moron," I said, awed. A green moron, with rather feminine taste in clothing...

"Exactly. Which is why he's too stupid to take over the earth," Gaz summarized.

"…I think you're onto something, Dib. No, really… Something really, hideously WEIRD… I'd sure like to come with you and spy on his house…" Yep: I'm officially off my rocker now.

"R-really?" Dib's eyes seemed like they would pop out of their sockets before he looked skeptical again. "You're not making this up, are you?"

"No, I'm very curious about Zim. Many need-to-know facts… like, what planet he's from." We watched as the alien ran around the room, yelling curses and spewing corn mush on the other students. "He's the most interesting thing I've seen in a while...oh look, he's got a potato launcher." A random kid at what I guessed to be the "reject table" in the corner got pounded by a flying spud. Ouch…

"YOU… you wanna team up and stop ZIM?" Dib squealed in disbelief.

I shrugged. "Yeah, sure, why not? I've got nothing better to do."

"YES!" He screamed- right in my ear, I might add. "This is gonna be the best spying trip EVER!"

"Stop making noises before I feed you to my security dolls!" Gaz threatened, vaporizing another pig. I was starting to develop a distaste for Dib's sister.

"But… we're at Skool…" He looked around nervously before turning to me. "I'll call you later. Wait! Where do you live?"

"Right down the road from here, on Stenson Street," I answered. "We just moved in about a month ago."

"Perfect!" he scribbled down his number on a scrap of paper and handed it to me. "That's only like two blocks away from my house! Do you think you can come over tomorrow?"

"If I can finish all my homework, I think so."

Zim crashed into a vending machine behind us, angrily pulled out a laser gun, and reduced it to a smoking pile of ashes. A random teacher grabbed him by the collar and hauled him away, probably to the principal's office. So the space boy has LASERS, hm? I'd always thought lasers were pretty cool.

"AWESOME!" Dib squealed, still ecstatic.

I was just about to tell him that I had a lot of homework to do this week and the whole spying thing might not work out, but the bell stopped me. "Oh," I sighed. "Looks like it's back to tutoring for me. And math time for you."

"Great," he groaned, standing. "C'mon, Gaz."

"You WILL face a horrible fate, Dib, unless you shut your face right now!" He recoiled in fear, motioning for me to follow him out. I did the smart thing and obeyed.

When the last skool bell finally rang, I shouldered my backpack and headed home, only stopping once to buy a raisin-flavored ice cream from that one vendor on the corner because he wouldn't stop yelling at me.

"UGH! ICE CREAM! BUY IT OR ELSE!" he waved a shrieked, weilding a huge crowbar.

"Okay, okay, dude, chill!" I laid down about three bucks and took the ice cream greedily, devouring my first real food in hours. I licked it as I weaved my way through the sidewalk crowd toward my street, through people going no particular direction. One guy was just walking in circles… It was plausible to wonder, in moments like this, if there wasn't some more advanced species out there. If said race did, in fact, exist, they'd sure make for better company than these loons, whoever they were.

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed a shadow moving next to me. When I turned, expecting to see someone, nobody was there. I could've sworn I just saw someone… And that's the second time people have disappeared on me today. I kept walking, staying vigilant, because I knew hobos were sneaky and liked to kidnap kids for money. Even though I was sixteen, I wasn't going to risk getting swiped by some corn-eating, cart-pushing, trench-coat wearing-

There it is again! I felt someone's presence right next to me, as if there was a child I was walking home with. When I glanced down, there was nothing but an old wad of gum on the pavement and a plastic grocery bag tumbling down the sidewalk. Okay…I'm either REALLY paranoid, or I've officially gone insane… Finally, after another five minutes of suspiciously staring at every pedestrian in sight, I opened the front door to our house. Like the rest of the houses in the area, it was narrow and stood two stories tall. I slammed the door and dumped my backpack on the ground inside.

"Hannah!" my dad called from the kitchen. "You're home! And guess what? I'm making tacos!" he grinned, showing off a tray full of black, charred corpses I guessed were somehow supposed to pass as edible food.

"Uh, thanks, dad, but… I ate on the way." Well, it's true.

"Are you sure? Cause I made muffins too!"

I hesitated. Muffins…"Nah, that's okay." It was a safe bet anything my dad made would be highly flammable and dangerous to come within ten feet of. "But I had this weird feeling walking home… like someone was following me… whenever I turned around there wasn't anyone there. It was really bizarre. Don't you think that's strange, dad?"

"Hm?" He stuffed four blackened taco shells in his mouth at once. "Oh, yeah, uh-huh."

"...Well, I'm going upstairs now, if you don't mind." I left my dad alone with the oven, mounting the stairs to my room. "Time to check on the weather report for this weekend's game." I opened up my computer and went to the weather page on the Channel 6 News website. This Saturday, the two biggest football teams in the state were competing for the championship. I wasn't a diehard football fan, but I was curious and had nothing else to do except homework. "Hm… let's see. "Cloudy clouds..." Can there even be any other kind of clouds? Well, that doesn't look too good… Huh- forecast is… seventy-three degrees, with a slight chance of hailstorms… Hailstorms?! What kind of idiots do they take us for?!" President Man needed to seriously invest in some state of the art, meteorologist technology: something that could actually go up in space, for instance, would be good. Since NASAPLACE had cut their funding six years ago, our space endeavors had been nothing but pathetic.

I climbed into bed, even though it early. Tutoring those kids had taken a lot out of me, and I had to get up early tomorrow morning to do it all over again. For once, I wished I could go to hi skool math class…

No! No I didn't! I still had some common sense!

Around two a.m., I woke to an annoying, incessant beeping from across the room. I blinked sleepily and moaned at it to shut up. When it didn't obey, I rubbed my eyes and sat up, glaring at my computer screen. "What the heck is THAT…?"

There were blinking red lights on the Channel 6 site I'd left up, and an image of some guy giving a report. Usually, they didn't put that particular red-eye shift weatherman on unless something big was happening, such as a tornado warning. I climbed out of bed and padded over to the computer. "- is keeping a scanner on it to see if we can determine its origin. We still don't know what might be causing this huge disruption in the cloudy clouds this morning, but we'll let ya know as SOON as we get anything. Now I'm gonna go drink coffee! Woo!"

Ugh… Some people were too hyper too early. Note to President Man- hire new weather people, too: ones who could come up with more intelligent adjectives to describe the atmosphere. Now, what's this about an unidentified-? My eye caught something moving across the video feed, and I enlarged it, squinting at the screen. "What...?" A huge shadow seemed was being cast over the clouds, but the source was out of the shot, and unidentifiable in shape. "It could be a weather balloon…" I said doubtfully. That's always what Professor Membrane wrote phenomena like this off as. But that thing was way too big to be a weather balloon, and I knew it. It also appeared to be moving a lot faster than a balloon, almost as if it the object was falling through the atmosphere. "What the heck…?" I dug the scrap of paper with Dib's number out of my pocket. I punched in his number, pressed Call, and waited.

"If anyone would know what this thing is, Membrane's son will," I reasoned. "His dad is the "savior of all mankind," after all, right?"

"Hello?" Dib answered groggily.

"Hey, it's your tutor calling. Have you checked the weather station lately?"

"No… Why?"

"There's something I think you'll want to see...up above the cloudy clouds."

"I HATE that weather channel," he complained.

"Me too, but just turn on your TV and look at it!" A few seconds passed, and then I heard him gasp.

"What? You see it, right?" I asked. "The big shadow thing?"

"Oh, I SEE it alright. I just don't know what it..." The silhouette grew darker on the cloudy backdrop, shrinking in size until it broke through. It came into view: what must have been an impossibly huge box flying through the air. The thing was huge enough to take up the entire screen, and as it cut through the clouds, it disappeared immediately afterwards underneath.

"Whoa!... What was that?!"

"Oh, no…" Dib muttered. "This is NOT good. I'll have to… have to make plans… tonight, or, or… postpone the spying mission, or maybe if I recruit the Eyeballs-"

"DIB!"

"Yeah?"

"You know what that… THING is?" I asked fearfully.

"Unfortunately, yes," he replied anxiously. "I've seen a few others like it since Zim came around…"

"It has something to do with Zim?" I asked, completely baffled. What could it possibly have to do with…? It COULDN'T be the…

"Hannah, meet me at the school right now- we have to stop him!"

"Right now?! But…" I shook my head. "Dib… what IS it?"

It was a good ten seconds before he answered. "... It's the robot. In a huge box- the one I saw Zim drawing yesterday! Only, it isn't tiny, like I thought: it's huge!"

"But… that's impossible! There AREN'T ALIENS! ... It…that can't be a robot- it's way too big!"

"I have a monitoring device tracking it right now: it's headed straight for downtown! He's gonna do something horrible!"

"What's he going to do?!" I demanded, already knowing the answer full well.

"Hannah… His leaders are sending it so he can destroy Earth."

Now, because there are no new fun facts this chapter, enjoy this Shakespearean sonnet parody of "My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun," dedicated to our favorite ice cream vendor from the show:

My Vendors Screams Are Nothing Like Controlled

My vendor's screams are nothing like controlled

Incinerators are far more cold than his wares cold

If creme be creme, why then, his ice is sludge

If stands be stores, ruined stores are where he sells

I have seen cones chocolate, plain, and square

But no such cones see I in his drawer

And in some singers is there more delight

Than from the voice he accosts with, so sure

I love to pass him up yet well I know

His quote is nearly canon, so it lives

I grant I never liked him, regardless-

His "Nightmare" warbling is comedically horrid

And yet, by fanfics, I think my tribute rare

As any, though ungarnered, that are there