Chapter One
Filthy Evil

AUGUST 24, PRESENT, 15:15:49

"Oh, I hate that Dib-beast so much!"

I kicked the pitiful hyuman can with all my might, and it went flying through the air and out of sight. My hands were balled into fists as I stormed down the Earth sidewalk, littered with more such cans and other horrible filth.All I could think about was the Dib-beast and how he had foiled me yet again, foiled my plans with his horrible, burning water-gun, a truly nightmarish weapon that only went further to prove how demented he was in his disturbed, overly-large hyuman Earth-boy head!

Shooting water at me…how dare he. How dare he! He, some pathetic little meat-monkey child form a backwards planet in some unimportant quadrant of space, daring to incur the wrath of the amazing Zim, greatest of all the Invaders of the mighty Irken Empire! How it made my squiggledysquooch contort with burning, raging...rage-burn!

"Move over!" I snapped, pushing aside a blond-haired Earth-boy dressed in the raggedy clothes of a hobo. Said Earth-child fell to the ground off the sidewalk, letting out a puny cry of indignation.

"Hey! Jerk," he grumbled, climbing shakily to his feet and brushing himself off, glaring after me. I ignored him and continued to storm. Oh, that Dib-monster! How I hated him, hated him so very, very much!

I lowered my eyes, now cleverly disguised by hideous white-and-purple lenses to hide my true identity, and after a moment I felt a smile creep onto my amazing Irken face. "Oh well, Dib. Enjoy your short water-victory now. I would have you soon enough."

I still had that time machine almost finished at home…

AUGUST 24, THREE YEARS AGO, 14:46:09

"It's the Bigfoot Baby! I know it!"

I struggled up the jungle gym as fast as I could, weighed down by my oxygen tank, holding the bars tightly with my metal claw of a hand. The tubes injected into my neck were working twice as hard as usual, I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, I knew if my dad was here he would tell me to stop, I was going to overexert myself again, that this was just going to end with another heart attack and another week in a hospital bed, but at the moment I didn't care. But I wasn't going to let Sasquatch Lad escape me this time!

"Leave me alone!" the hairy creature bellowed, climbing ahead of me and looking back in horror. It managed to reach the top of the jungle gym, sitting balanced on the uppermost bar, hoping I wouldn't be able to climb all the way up there. And unfortunately, I probably couldn't.

But luckily, I had a camera.

"Nobody has ever gotten footage this close before!" I said excitedly, holding it up to get the Sasquatch Lad in shot.

"Urgh-uh!" It gave its strange, bellowing Sasquatch-call pathetically as a gust of wind blew its shaggy fur. "I'm just a regular kid! I just want to eat grubs!"

"Eat your grubs, Sasquatch!" I cried, joy exploded in my aching chest. Finally, proof! Proof that the Bigfoot child I had told everyone about was real, and that I hadn't just been "seeing things," that it hadn't been me who broke Dad's belt sander— well, okay, that was true, but proof that I had been wrestling it from a Sasquatch when it happened! My oxygen tank struggled to supply my rapidly beating heart with air, I was feeling giddy and breathless and--

And suddenly my view of the Sasquatch transformed into a horrible, pink rubber pig.

"AGH!"And suddenly I was falling. I screamed and felt the crash, hard, felt my ribs breaking against the earth, heard the crack of my nose, tasted the wet soil filling my mouth. I felt the oxygen tank explode, felt the deadly electricity crackle through me, and somewhere, in the back of my head, I could have sworn that I heard somebody laugh…

AUGUST 24, PRESENT, 16:39:36

"Doody-doody-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo…"

GIR was walking out of the house with Piggy-Friend, his new friendly rubber-piggy friend, singing to himself as he came down the sidewalk, happy to escape the house and the Master's labs. The Master was being all angsty 'cuz he was working on some new evil plan. It was…something. Hmm. What was it, now?

Oh yeah…the Dib-monkeh. That was it. Hee-hee. He liked Dib. It was so much fun when he and Dib and the Master would all go play together. How they would all laugh, with their "hee-hee's" and "mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha's," and play super-fun games like zap-the-Dib and splash-the-Zim, and then sometimes Master would get tacos on the way home and curse the Dib-monkeh while GIR looked forward to another day of fun tomorrow...

Unbeknownst to GIR, that very Dib-monkey was walking down the sidewalk towards the base right at that moment.

Dib blinked his eyes. What was that flash of light? And why did his tank seem so much heavier all of a sudden? His hand shook with the weight of that one little piece of paper, the note he had worked so hard to write up all the previous night…he had even managed to get Gaz to fix all the spelling errors in it for him. Wait, wasn't he supposed to be good at spelling? Well, he had been, before all of those blows to the head…back when he was in all the advanced classes instead of the special ed…back before all the accidents, before all the horrible nights tossing and turning and dreaming about horrible, horrible pink pigs…

Why am I so mixed up lately? he wondered. Why does everything seem so strange? After all, it had been years since his last accident...yet lately he seemed unable to focus...he should probably tell his dad...maybe the neurologist should look to see if there was any more damage to his memory that they didn't know about yet...

Dib began to round the corner towards Zim's house. How he was going to sneak past the lawn gnomes he didn't really know…sometimes they just let him pass, though, knowing he wasn't really much of a threat…and then Gaz will come pick me up later, Dad will be worried that I keep wandering out of the house...

Just then, as he began to turn, he saw Zim's little robot servant. He jumped.

"AGH!" The paper flew from his hand.

"AGH!" GIR cried, dropping Piggy-Friend.

"AGH!"

"AGH!"

GIR abandoned Piggy-Friend and turned to run back inside.

Dib turned to the thing he had dropped. A small, pink rubber piggy.

Suddenly, everything in Dib's head clicked. He growled.

Zim.

AUGUST 24, PRESENT, 16:42:03

One of the screens before me displayed the outside, but I did not bother to watch it. I was too busy watching the screen with Dib's History, Heartbeat and Lifeline, watching with detached amusement at the way my precious piggies were making them jump and squirm.

And then I heard his voice.

It was loud but weak, coming through the speakers on the screen. Dib was outside, pounding on the door. He was on his knees, yes, on his knees before the amazing Zim! (even if I was a hundred feet below him), his one hand a metal claw, the other weak hyuman flesh, demanding entrance.

"I know you're behind the piggies, Zim! I don't know how, but I know that it's you!" His voice was not like his own; it was strained, weak, breathless, and on the verge of desperate insanity. "Rubber piggies have ruined my life and it's all been you!"

Well, this was too much. I bent over, cackling joyously. "So close to victory!"

And now I turned back to the screen of three years previously, to watch that victory become complete…

AUGUST 24, THREE YEARS AGO, 14:55:23

"Come on, kid! If I lose one more patient today I'm gonna get written up!"

I opened my eyes a tiny crack— even that seemed hard, painful, adding to the horrible ache that was in every bone and muscle in my body. I felt like I was drowning, I couldn't breathe…where was my air tank? I wasn't used to lying down this way, flat on my back, without that awkward arch in my back that made it so hard to sleep at night…and where was I? Why couldn't I seem to move? Why couldn't I feel my arms or legs?

"Clear! Come on, kid!"

He was holding those things in his hands…those electrical things you see on the TV shows, that they use on a person who's going to die.

There was a flash. And now they were piggies.

Of course, I thought. Of course…

"Clear!"

The piggies did nothing, of course; they pounded them again and again against my chest— I could feel my head bob with the force, but my body was gone now, I couldn't feel it— no new life was pouring into me…just…what? A kind of dull acceptance, a knowledge that of course it would end this way, with those horrible pigs…

And tiredness…I needed to sleep…

"Stay with me! STAY WITH ME!"

So...tired...

My eyes began to close…

AUGUST 24, PRESENT, 16:44:13

BEEEEEEEP…

History. Flatline.

Heartbeat. Flatline.

Lifeline. Flatline.

A tube extended from the ceiling. A soda— an Irken one, not one of those disgusting hyuman dookie-drinks or whatever they are called--shot down into my waiting hand. I took a sip with a sigh.

"Ahhh. Foolish Earth-creature."

I stepped into the lift. It rose into the air, taking me back up into the base.

I came out of the toilet, hopping joyously over the rim and throwing my empty cup into the trashcan— it was a lift too, not a real trashcan, but it came out close to the waste disposal room so I might as well use it like one. I walked into the living room. It was utterly quiet. GIR was at the window, staring out blankly.

"Well, GIR?"

GIR didn't answer. I smirked and went to the door. I opened it.

Nobody was there.

Nobody had ever been there, now.

"Dib gone?" GIR asked, turning to me, one glowing blue eye raised.

"Oh, yes, GIR. Dib is gone."

I cackled to myself. Yes. Dib was finally gone for good.

AUGUST 24, PRESENT, 16:44:20

Zim ascended out of the lab through the lift. The room was quiet and empty. Even the base's artificial intelligence left, moving its attention to the upstairs, following after its boss. The only sound was the long, unending BEEEEEEEP of the time machine's sensors.

History. Flatline.

Heartbeat. Flatline.

Lifeline. Flatline.

And then…

Dib's History line began to shimmer, flex, move. The beeping lowered just a bit, only two-thirds of the volume it had been before. The line did not spike, it did not make bumps or squares like it had been moments before, when the child called Dib had been alive in the past; instead it rippled, like the waves on an ocean, strange, snakelike, changing colors rapidly…

And then the glowing light appeared, filling the screen.

The room was bathed in sudden whiteness as the portal opened, and out of it came three shapes, bobbing in the air, glowing just like their gate. The portal light behind them suddenly vanished; the three were left floating there, hovering in the Irken's red metal lab.

"Well. We have arrived," one said, turning to the others.

"Yeees," said the middle one, its voice drawling. "Now to begin our plan against the Irken Zim."

And with that, the three shot into the air like meteors, passing through the ceiling of Zim's subterranean base as if it were not even there, and disappearing from sight.

Well, there you go. That was interesting, wasn't it? And it's going to get even more so, once Zim sees what his new, Dib-less world is like. That's coming soon; JoeMerl has that written already, but chooses to wait to update for now. So, be on the lookout for Chapter Two, coming soon.

...What's that? (sigh) And leave reviews before going to read JoeMerl's other stories. For goodness sakes, you are shameless...