It didn't take long after Zim arrived on Earth for Dib to realize that he had a lot to thank the alien for. He doubted he'd ever get the chance to actually thank him, but he was more than certain that that didn't matter to Zim in the least. He watched Zim day in and day out, whether from the opposite end of the classroom at school during a test, or from right next to him in the cafeteria as he commented on Zim's lack of eating habits, or on a monitor in Dib's room connected to numerous cameras he had installed in Zim's base. And from the many things he learned and took note of and analyzed and over-analyzed, nothing implied that the Irken placed much value in a simple "thank you."

But Dib, he knew it was important; after all, it was like a condensed version of everything Dib contributed to the rivalry. Not that he thought Zim would understand and not that he cared whether or not Zim understood, but it was still a very important thanks.

Before Zim had arrived, Dib often dreamed of being the one to open the world's eyes to the paranormal. Bringing a vampire out of the shadows for the residents of his city to see, proving to them not only the existence of such blood-sucking entities, but also proving his own worth in bringing one out into the light to show to them. Or perhaps befriending the Bigfoot that had come and used his belt sander, bringing him to skool one day and showing that, see, everyone! Dib was hardly crazy for seeing this hairy biped monster in his garage, he just happened to look. Or even, he didn't dare dream, thwarting an alien invasion single-handedly and proving to the world that he wasn't an insane, incompetent nuisance, but rather a highly-skilled, intelligent hero who could and would rise above all others and take it upon himself to rescue his entire race from the clutches of an advanced alien species bent on taking over Earth.

His wish, for the most part, was granted.

Zim had come to Earth, and Dib had thwarted his endless schemes more than just a few times since then, but even in eight years' time, Dib was still an outcast. Everyone still thought he was crazy. He was no hero, even if he had single-handedly captured the alien menace bent on taking over Earth twice now, he was just a childish, obsessive, crazy kid who, according to the kids at school, was just "too stupid to tell how stupid he was." Even the Swollen Eyeball had started to dismiss his constant attempts to prove Zim's identity as an alien, because none of his evidence was conclusive enough for them. The Swollen Eyeball, his colleagues and peers in intellect, and even they rejected his claims.

Dib always thought that if he could only show his peers, whether they be peers in age or in intellect, that very menace that he always spoke of, they would see the light. They would understand what Dib had been fighting all his life; they would recognize him as the savior he really, truly was. The savior that swooped in from social obscurity to save those who ridiculed him, the savior who could see clearly that light of truth that all others cringed away from for fear of turning blind. But not a single one of them opened their eyes to the very real and tangible truth standing (or sitting or running or fighting or experimenting) before them. And while they only became blinder and blinder in the face of a brighter and realer light, Dib only opened his eyes and enlightened himself to yet another truth.

Discovering their ignorance, willful and blissful and born from their inherent tunnel vision, trained upon the normal and blind to anything but, was the first thing Dib knew he had to thank Zim for.

It didn't take long after that for Dib to learn that one realization leads quickly to another.

Dib had always known that he was hated among his peers. Countless wedgies and taunts and bouts of laughter at him back when he was a kid made this easier to pick up on than it needed to be. Back in Ms. Bitters's class, and even later on in Hi Skool, nobody ever wanted to sit with him at lunch, or work with him on projects, or do anything with him. Not that he really wanted them to, of course, but their fierce reluctance to so much as look at him stung a little bit, and he grew to hate them more and more with nearly each passing day.

After a time, he even found himself thinking that, ironically, he probably hated the student body more than Zim did.

And it was that realization that led him to realize that he never really wanted to save these people from the alien's plan to destroy them. He wanted to show them their folly, wanted to show them he had been right, but actually saving them was another matter entirely. After all, there was only so far he could go in fighting for the fate of the world while still claiming to be fighting for all those worthless children that had always hated him for close to no reason. Most of them deserved it, after all, whether the "it" in question was destruction or slavery. Some of his fellow Agents in the Swollen Eyeball may still be worth saving, and they were hardly worth the immense work he put into stopping Zim's schemes. Of course, Dib couldn't say that he didn't feel the need to preserve his own way of life, to whatever extent excluded being hated by all humanity. But even that hardly seemed like a battle to save the world.

After all, what else was there to Dib's life besides his rivalry with Zim?

His family ignored him as actively as his peers, and his sister seemed to hate him almost more than they did. Dib regretted Gaz's hatred for him, wished he could do something about it, as she really had only been the only one who had ever seen the truth alongside him. She was the only one who could, if she wanted to, vouch for Dib's sanity. There really were aliens, and one was here on Earth! Dib was right all along! But his sister, his darling little sister, wouldn't help him even if he was being tortured right before her eyes. His father wasn't around enough to be able to care about Dib one way or the other, and nowadays he could only display mild disappointment at best towards his son's capers. It always astonished Dib that his own father, a world-renowned scientist, could be so amazingly blind. And that hardly reflected well on the rest of his life, as he garnered only more of his father's disappointment by choosing not to apply for any college just yet. Dib tried to explain, he really did, that he needed to stop the alien menace rather than flee the state in search of a school that wouldn't turn him away at the door for being "Membrane's crazy kid," but his father wouldn't hear a word of it. Dib still wasn't sure just how long he could hope to be able to stay at his home before his father and Gaz finally pressured him to leave.

He tried to make up for it by getting himself a job, but his accursed reputation preceded him and only Bloaty's Pizza Hog would welcome him into the ranks of their staff. Two weeks of that job and two weeks of being endlessly tormented by an enormous pig costume and by Zim's sharp, obnoxious laugh were more than enough for him to quit. Dib knew well how that must have looked to his family; he wasn't an idiot. His family, and those who had been his fellow students in Hi Skool, and the rest of the city, and the rest of the world probably knew him as none other than that crazy alien-hunting kid, a nuisance to everyone around him, and a lazy bum who couldn't even keep a job. Dib, needless to say, hated it.

But then there was Zim.

All the energy he didn't spend on going to college or getting a job, he spent on working hard to keep Zim as far as possible from conquering Earth. All the energy they assumed was simply being wasted away sitting on the couch and waiting for Mysterious Mysteries to come on was utterly exhausted by the end of the day as he took it upon itself to be the sole savior of the Earth, rescuing his race from the cold clutches of an advanced alien race. Every brain cell that the world was sure he had lost after potentially being dropped on his ("big and stupid") head as an infant was spent translating the Irken text Zim fed into the computer at his base, learning all he could about the next overly-extravagant plan, and taking deliberate steps and precautions to make sure it never came to fruition.

And when he wasn't hard at work doing that, he took the initiative himself. He developed more refined weapons for himself, and put together his own plans and schematics for taking down the alien menace threatening his planet. He broke into Zim's house and even succeeded in taking away a few gadgets for studying in his father's lab. He even almost stole one of Zim's lawn gnomes once! And he still continuously developed increasingly more foolproof methods of revealing Zim's identity as an Irken, even, just in case there was somebody out there who would listen.

But nobody ever listened, and Dib's plans to capture the alien hadn't worked. They seemed caught in an even battle, two outcasts that nobody on Earth would ever acknowledge of their own narrow-sighted will, trapped in a war for the fate of the planet and all its inhabitants.

After a time, however, Dib stopped protecting the Earth. And as such, Zim stopped attacking it, simple as that. But within such a complex and convoluted war as the one the two of them maintained, such a change could only be called simple because it went by completely unnoticed. He could hardly figure out which of them had mentally given up on the planet first, but after three years of fighting back and forth had gone by and Zim had finally captured Dib for that first time, the Earth had already stopped being in any danger. Because at that point, when he woke up at his own doorstep, barely remembering anything that occurred at Zim's base but knowing that he had been allowed to get away, he knew that Zim no longer wanted Dib dead, and this came as less of a surprise than he felt it should have. And Dib knew he had every right to expose Zim as the alien he was the first, then second time he had captured the invader. But throughout each experience, he had known that he wouldn't be able to put Zim on an alien autopsy table. So much life and fiery confidence and stubborn resolve didn't deserve to dissolve in the poison of a lethal injection.

Dib supposed that he had known for a while already that he had never truly hated Zim. He supposed he realized it when he started working with what his father called "real, legitimate science." Not that paranormal investigation wasn't a legitimate field, mind you, but that's another topic altogether. He finally had his father's approval back then, and with his father's approval came the world's approval. The kids at school didn't make fun of him anymore, and for a while, he really thought he was happy. But steadily, the allure of his rivalry with Zim called to him more and more, and to his great surprise, he could not resist.

He had weighed the approval of the entire world against his twisted, selfish relationship with Zim, and Zim had won.

And, Dib supposed, the next step was really only natural. Or maybe not natural, but certainly logical and so much so that it seemed almost destined to happen. He had long since learned that one thing inevitably leads to another, one realization to the next, one alien arrival to one endless rivalry, one obsession to one desperate attachment. Even back when he was a kid, eight years ago, he didn't need to know Zim for more than ten minutes to know that he was obsessed. He couldn't help watching this peculiar creature before him. The way Zim walked, the way he talked, the calculation in his eyes as he looked over the cafeteria food in disgust, his amusing reactions to everyday substances, whether they be water or meat, his undying loyalty towards his leaders. And it truly was just a fascination; it was a basic need of Dib's to learn as much as he could about this strange alien culture lying just a few million light years beyond the cosmic horizon. Dib couldn't help but watch Zim obsessively, recording everything he saw within his mind as though he himself was a camera.

He watched as Zim slowly but surely adapted to life at Skool over his two years there, then adapted to Hi Skool, then adapted to everything else. He stared deep into Zim's cold, disgusted stare as the alien looked curiously at the most simple of things, be it a flower or a jump rope or the jungle gym outside the Skool, and he watched as Zim took it all in, placing it far beneath him on some sort of egotistical ladder but learning all his limited attention span would allow him to nonetheless. Dib watched Zim as much as he possibly could, first to spot a weakness, then almost as an attempt to read his thoughts. He was only curious, after all; what could the alien possibly hope to accomplish by placing that strange Irken device on a tree? What was Zim doing, experimenting on those squirrels? Was there some reason why he tested samples of cafeteria food in his desk during classes, or was it just some way to quench boredom? Even Zim's tendency to rant didn't tell Dib nearly enough to soothe the human's ever-growing curiosity.

He watched, curious and fascinated and needing to know more and more and more, through the eyes of the lawn gnome he hacked into as Zim stepped out of the Skool Bus and into his base. He switched his gaze to another monitor to watch as the Irken goose-stepped into his kitchen, grabbing one of his strange Irken "licking sticks," as Dib had taken to thinking of them, or a stack of waffles, and plopping down onto his couch and removing his disguise. As Zim sat, resting on the couch and watching his stolen cable TV, eating and calmed down from the near-endless yelling that had no-doubt occurred during the day. Dib sat beside him on the other side of town, watching him intently. He was certain now that he would not find out anything new watching Zim in his break time, but that didn't matter. Years had told him that this was no different from watching the alien's actions from the other end of the classroom, and meant nothing new. After all, he reminded himself time and again, he was only curious, that was all.

But being so obsessed with Zim and everything the Irken did, so attached to his rivalry with him, and going through the throes of teenagerhood, he could hardly help it if his obsession had become some unintended beast of an attachment to the alien without whom Dib was not sure he could live. And indeed, he became sure over time that life without Zim would be dull and meaningless, if it were even possible. This alien gave him purpose, gave him something to strive for, gave him that great gift that everyone yearns for privately throughout their lives. Without Zim, Dib's life would be nothing, and he knew that all too well. The rivalry that Zim had given him was the greatest gift in the world: a meaning, a purpose, something to look forward to each morning, and Dib found himself thinking from time to time as he watched his screens that he wished that he could thank Zim for that.

But Dib realized at some point, and he was not sure when, even that the rivalry stopped being enough.

He wouldn't have even known if he hadn't started to notice that going home with new bruises and a disk of what was almost conclusive evidence of alien life no longer satisfied him. Brawls of glaring back and forth across the classroom or the neighborhood or across town on holographic projectors, and going through all the motions of a real fight, or throwing a water balloon into Zim's open window, or preparing to stop yet another one of Zim's spectacular plots, none of it really appealed. Dib found himself more fascinated in staring at the screen as Zim sat on the couch, content in doing nothing, if only for a moment. Zim's calm, relaxed face, changing the channel on the television, antennae leaning back lazily with their tips coming to rest against the cushions on the back of the couch, all for only a moment or two before his expression contorted into rage once more at GIR and whatever the little robot had done to set Robodad on fire.

Dib found himself wondering at times what the use of all the rivalry between himself and the alien was if neither of them seemed bent on winning anymore. Zim had captured Dib time and time again, and Dib had returned the favor twice already. And yet they still did this, fought with everything they had to maintain a twisted, bitter rivalry that served no purpose other than to keep itself afloat, their lifeboat in a sea of worthlessness. Dib couldn't help but think that things could be better than that.

After all, it was only natural. One thing always led to another, and obsessed as he was with Zim, who could blame him for only becoming more obsessed as time went on? Who could blame him for needing to watch the alien, to take note of him, to see him as often as he could? He needed someone, after all, everybody needed someone. Zim was only more than perfect. Nobody could truly tell him that it was wrong; Zim had been around for nearly half of Dib's life by now and the alien knew Dib better than anyone. And unlike everyone else, Zim didn't seem to want to go away. Zim was the only real solid, comforting force in Dib's life, so could anyone really blame him for watching the Irken on his monitors up in his room, fascinated by the strange alien and all that he did, admiration welling within him at the many things that set Zim so far apart from—and perhaps above—Dib's own race? At the many little quirks that set Zim so far apart—and in Dib's eyes, above—the Irken's own race?

Could he really, truly, honestly help it if Zim—not the rivalry, just Zim and nobody else fulfilled him and completed him? He couldn't stop watching the alien day and night, it seemed, not even if he wanted to, for even his dreams now were plagued (blessed?) by soft green skin and curious slick antennae and wide, red eyes, softly aglow with approval, acceptance, affection.

Yes, Dib knew all too well that he wanted something more with Zim than just a petty rivalry with complex rules.

And as he sat in his computer chair and watched Zim work in his lab, he was hesitant to label that something worth thanking.