Zim glared at Dib. Dib glared at Zim. Gaz walked past them both, unnoticed, sneering at their childish display. It was a stalemate and a competition; who would look away first? Who was weaker?

The warning bell rang.

Both boys blinked at the same time, looking as if they had just come out of a trance. Zim recovered first, flashing his zipper-like teeth at Dib in a mocking grin. He then turned and fled for the relative safety of the skool building, weaving between the crowds of human children until he was safely in the hall. Only when he was leaning against the lockers far from the door did he allow himself to let out the breath he had been holding. The kids would slow Dib down enough that he would have a hard time following Zim.

"Feeling threatened?"

"Hardly," Zim muttered, pushing himself off of the lockers and wincing. The run had made the nauseous feeling in his squeedlyspooch worse, and his muscles were trembling slightly again. He held as still as possible until he had the tremors under control again. He glared at the air in front of him as he stalked to his classroom.

Zim had just sat down at his desk when the second bell rang, its shrill cry causing his antennae to press even closer to his head. A moment later and Dib slid into the room, glaring sullenly at Zim as he passed the Irken on the way to his desk. Zim returned the glare, even though he was developing a headache from scowling so much. A flicker of black out of the corner of his eye attracted his attention, and he turned in time to see Ms. Bitters appear from behind her desk. She wore her own scowl, clearly advertising her hatred of all who were present and of life in general.

"You know, I wonder what she has back there."

One of Zim's antennae cocked slightly in interest. "Probably some sort of torture chamber," he said with a slight smirk. Ms. Bitters began speaking, starting with her usual condemnation of the collective student body speech.

"Maybe. Or a secret disco lair."

"What? Disco lair?"

The sound of a throat being cleared attracted Zim's attention, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Zita glaring at him. When they made eye contact she muttered something about Zim being crazy. Zim snorted and turned around again so that he was facing forward, propping his chin in one hand as he tuned into Ms. Bitters' lesson on how America was discovered by some guy named Kris-No-Fur Clown-Bus in 1429. He could almost feel his brain turning to mush after ten seconds.

Zim was staring blankly at the board with slightly glazed eyes when something having at least one corner hit him. It smacked lightly into the side of his head right above his hand and fell on the desk. The thing turned out to be a folded piece of paper, and from the angle it had been thrown, the sender was most likely Dib. Zim glanced over at the human, who was staring at him intently. He kept a suspicious blurry glare on Dib until the note was unfolded, at which point he glanced down to read it.

Zim-

Whatever you're planning, I'm going to stop it. Give up now.

Beneath those two simple lines was a bad stick figure drawing of Zim. The scribble depicted the alien on an autopsy table, a giant scapel hovering menacingly over his body and his guts splayed everywhere. A corner of Zim's mouth twitched. Lovely.

Reaching into his PAK, Zim fished around for a while before pulling out a half-chewed pencil he had rescued from Gir at some distant point in time. He quickly added to the note, writing a phrase that was rude in both Irken and English. He also drew a Dib stick-figure where the scapel was stabbing into its head with plenty of blood, courtesy of random pencil strokes. Zim swiftly folded the note back up along its original creases and flung it expertly at Dib's head. It hit him squarely in the ear and stayed there, causing Zim to snicker into his hand as Dib jumped and yanked the paper out of his ear.

Even feeling like shit, there were still some perks in Zim's day.

---

The human sighed, looking back at the ground. "Yes Zim, the Dib is sick."

Zim decided to grace the situation with a loud and, from his point of view, appropriately mocking laugh. Complete with a pointing finger at Dib. The laugh continued on for at least thirty seconds before he inhaled at the wrong moment and dissolved into a fit of coughing. When he had sufficiently recovered, he looked back at Dib. A smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth as he regarded the human smugly.

Dib raised an eyebrow as the Irken stared at him without saying anything, only grinning predatorily. Finally the boy couldn't take it. He struggled up off of the brick wall with a cough. "What?" He asked with a glare.

"You're sick," was Zim's smug reply. Dib gave him a flat look.

"Um, yeah Zim. I think I already said that." The Irken's expression didn't change. He walked forward until he was kneeling in Dib's face, careful not to touch the still-damp ground. He flashed Dib a predator's smile, filled with teeth.

"No Dib, you don't understand. You're sick. That means you're weak, that you're vulnerable. Right in front of your enemy." He said.

It took Dib a few minutes to realize what Zim had said. When he did, his eyes widened for a moment before his head dropped. He slumped back against the wall, causing the Irken to cock his head in confusion.

"I hate you," he grumbled, coughing again and glaring up at the alien. "I give up."

Zim was stumped. Dib never gave up, never just quit. He had to be planning something, although Zim wasn't sure what he could be planning in the sorry state he appeared to be in. That is, if he was telling the truth about being sick in the first place. Cautiously the Irken inched a little bit closer, squinting at Dib as though he were a museum specimen.

"You're up to something…How does Zim know you're not lying about being sick?" He said suspiciously. Dib shot him an utterly flat look.

"Zim, do I look well to you?" He asked bluntly. Zim took a moment to reassess the human's condition. No, he looked honestly sick. The Irken wasn't convinced, though, and Dib picked up on that. He sighed and leaned his head back against the wall.

"Look Zim, I'll tell you something. I don't get sick often, but when I do, I get really sick. So there's not a lot I can do right now," Dib said, looking at Zim out of the corner of his eye. Zim continued to scowl at him, still not fully convinced.

In the slight pause that followed, a peal of thunder echoed across the sky.

---

Something hit Zim.

Normally the Irken wouldn't have even cared. Indeed, in the zoned out state that he was in, he probably wouldn't have noticed if a textbook was thrown at him until it was ten minutes after the fact. The difference this time was that whatever hit him, hit him on the back of the neck. Though it didn't have much mass, the place it hit was right above the injury hidden by his Invader uniform's collar.

The reaction was immediate. The Irken let out a yelp, jaw clenching in an attempt to prevent any further noise. He curled inward, one hand coming up to hover above the wound. His head swam from the pain that shot through it from the small touch, and he broke out in a cold sweat. For a moment Zim thought he would pass out in the middle of class. Then the moment passed and the Invader, still panting slightly, turned his narrowed eyes to whatever had hit him.

It was the note, folded into a deadly triangle and sitting innocently on the floor. Zim didn't even bother picking it up, instead glaring across the room as hatefully as he could. He could see Dib flinch visibly from the force of the glare, although the human tried to return it anyway. After a few second, though, he dropped his eyes.

"You're being stared at."

Zim blinked and looked around. Over half of the class was staring at him, most with the expression that meant that they considered this new act just another form of his insanity. Like the good distressed Irken he was, Zim's response to this new attention was to hiss at them. As this was something they were used to, as opposed to the weird twitching he had just done, the satisfied class promptly went back to ignoring Zim. Zim glared at them for a few more moments before turning his attention back to Dib.

The human was trying his hardest to disappear into his seat, rightly afraid of the Irken's wrath. Zim was pretty sure Dib had no idea what had just happened, but knew that it had pissed Zim off. And it had.

The bell for lunch rang shrilly in the silence.

---

One more chapter, then we're through.