Sunday

It was Sunday morning, which meant freedom from skool for one more day. Gaz was happy about this until she remembered she now couldn't speak or do anything for herself. To make matters worse, this meant she had no way to get away from Dib! If she had to listen to him for more than a few minutes she would be certain to go incurably insane.

Dib had placed her on the floor in front of him, and now lay on his stomach reading from that execrable spell book about the spell he wanted the book for. The introduction to each spell explained the principles behind it.

"This is the most exciting spell of them all, Gazzee. It shows your emotional age," he explained. "'Your emotional age is expressed as the chronological age of an ordinary individual who shows the same amount of emotional maturity.'

"Uh oh, those are probably too many big words for you, huh? Do you know what that means? It means if you think like an adult and react to frustration like an adult, the spell will make you LOOK like an adult to everyone else. If you think like an infant and react to frustration like an infant, then you would LOOK like an infant. Hmmm, I don't know what would happen if you think like an adult, teenager or child but you react to frustration like an infant. But that's impossible, so never mind."

Dib resumed reading the book. "'The characteristic way we move changes according to age. Babies... ' that's YOU, Gazzee!" he tickled her belly, " ... are still learning how to move, so they move CLUMSILY! Children...' that's me! '... are learning to move more accurately, and continue to improve until they are teenagers. At this point, rapidly growing arms and legs make them clumsy again.' Uh oh. 'Adults have learned to conserve energy and therefore move as little as possible. Old people move stiffly. It is a large part of our perception of a person's age - '"

Tortured almost beyond endurance from listening to Dib reading to her, Gaz began to scream. Had she been able to speak she would have said something like, "Dib you will shut your mouth right this second or you will wish I was never born!"

Dib paused in his reading when he head Gaz whining. "What's wrong? Oh, I'm sorry!" he said, genuinely contrite. "Here I've just been reading to you, when you wanted me to hold you!"

Gaz froze. She could imagine few things she would welcome less. As she recoiled in disgust, Dib took her in his arms and rocked her. He was holding her too closely for her to kick or punch, but at least she was now close enough to yank his hair. Stiffly and awkwardly, she grasped a handful of his hair, but then she had to figure out how to pull it as savagely as she wanted to.

Before she could do this however, Dib had gently disengaged her hands, chuckling, "That's my hair! Ha - ir! Your own hair will grow soon enough, Gazzee. Then you'll be sitting in front of your mirror for hours, and you'll fuss with it and scream, 'OOH! I have to fix My Hair!!' or whatever girls say when they're doing their hair. When you learn how to talk, will you tell me what they say? Or is that a secret for girls only?"

--

Gaz hoped this was they day she'd finally get some pizza, but for dinner they had roast chicken instead. She was coaxed to swallow spoonful after spoonful of chicken pureed with lima beans and broccoli, which was even worse than chicken alone.

After washing the dishes as Dib dried them, Membrane announced they were going to the park. "My child development colleague tells me it is beneficial for children to see how they fit into the larger community!" he explained.

Still wearing his lab coat, boots, gloves and goggles, the Professor carried Gaz to the car with Dib happily running alongside, and they drove to the biggest park in town. They easily found a free bench under a big tree and sat down to enjoy the shade. "Too much sunshine can be detrimental to the skin, and this is especially true of baby skin!" said the Professor, almost dropping Gaz as he pointed dramatically towards the sun.

Before long, the family found itself surrounded as all the adults close enough to see her made a beeline for Gaz.

"That's my sister! She - " Dib began proudly, but they roughly elbowed him aside for being too old to interest them. He was almost a teenager, and they hated early teenagers so much that they even hated anybody who was soon going to be a teenager. In fact, the only thing they hated anywhere near as much as an early teenager was prejudice.

"Stop whining," somebody snarled at him, even though Dib hadn't even been thinking about complaining about anything.

They all turned their backs on the smiling Dib to chuck the frowning, surly Gaz under the chin. Dib soon realized this was actually a blessing; they were all just talking baby talk anyway. He decided to stay nearby in case he was needed for something, and so he wouldn't be left behind if the Professor decided to get up and leave all of a sudden.

Gaz wasn't doing a single thing but scowling into space while wiggling her fingers, but that was all it took to make these total strangers fall to their knees and deify her. They patted her on the head, plucked at her dress, generally fussed over her and did all the other things Gaz hated, but this time she could do nothing to stop them OR get away. It was her worst nightmare come true.

"She is so cool!"

"She is SO awesome!"

"She... is... the coolest... EVER!"

"She rocks!"

"She rules!"

"She is teh awesomeness!"

"She is the shiznit!" gushed one of the younger adults in the crowd. Even though they had not the first clue what the word meant, even the oldest grandmas nodded in enthusiastic agreement. If it was about baby Gaz and if it meant something good, then it just had to be true.

Gaz struggled but her father wouldn't let go of her; fascinated though he was with the plant growth and insect life in the park, he wasn't about to drop her on the ground. Gaz tried to sneer at the slack-jawed, gawking crowd to "Go away," but when she opened her mouth she spit up her pureed dinner all over herself instead.

When anybody pukes, unless they're babies, it is considered repulsive and disgustingly sickening. When a baby does it, people think it's cute. Gaz's entourage now all fell over themselves as completely as if she had made the most devastating retort ever.

"Aww, she spit up! That's so adorable!"

"You think she couldn't get any more awesome, but then she spits up and she becomes even MORE awesome!"

"Like totally ohmuhgahhhd or something, I just wanna HUG HER! She'd like, totally spit up like alloverme but it'd be like soooooo WORTH IT! ShesaGODDESS!!"

"I love it when she spits up! That's the best thing she does."

"Wanna bet she spits up on him all the time?" someone suggested, jerking his thumb in Dib's general direction.

If they had been indoors when this idea was suggested, the roof would have been blown clear off the building. Immediately they all staggered around weak-kneed and wetting their pants, braying with laughter at the mere thought of it. Quite a few began to choke and had to be patted on the back, and a couple of them laughed so hard they even gave themselves nosebleeds.

Their outburst was loud enough to distract Dib from working out his latest plan to catch Zim. He could see a lot of people laughing... very hard... but he couldn't see a single thing funny. Among the people who were spastic with laughter, he noticed a bloody nose or two. This was what had amused them so much? An injury was all it took to amuse some people, he thought grimly. He offered them his handkerchief, but that send them into even wilder spasms of laughter.

Then he noticed the mess Gaz had made of herself and called his father's attention to it. After looking up from a intriguing patch of Trifolium repens, the Professor pulled a lab towel out of his pocket and wiped off as much of the puke as he could before announcing they had better return home to put some clean clothes on Gaz.

Dib kept happily telling Gaz about everything he could see out the car windows. Unable to attack him to get him to shut up, Gaz started to whine a gurgle that meant, "Dib if you do not shut up... " but stopped when she saw Dib reach toward her as if to hug her. Dib resumed looking out the windows and describing everything he saw, which Gaz had decided was preferable to being hugged.

When they were about a quarter of a mile away from home, Dib suddenly saw a bright object falling from the sky.

"DAD!"

Membrane braked so fast he almost went through the windshield. "What is it, son? Did I nearly have an accident?"

"I just saw something fall from the sky! Maybe it was a UFO! It fell right over there!" Dib pointed toward the woods behind their house. "C'mon, let's go see what it is - "

"It was only the reflection of the sun off the windshield of a plane, son," Membrane explained. "There are no UFOs!"

"But if it was flying and we don't know what it is, that's enough to mean it's an unidentified flying object," Dib insisted.

"I do know what it was, and it was a plane. Now let's hear no more about it, son."

No planes were visible in the sky, but Dib didn't bother pointing this out. The Professor's voice had been firm.

--

As it would soon be Gaz's bedtime, Membrane changed her straight into her night clothes. As Dib coaxed Gaz to eat a revolting bowl of pureed oatmeal and asparagus, Membrane suddenly realized something. He would be returning to work the next day, and Dib was going to go to school. "I can't make you stay home and babysit, son; I'm almost certain that would violate some child labor law. Now where am I going to get a babysitter at such short notice?" he mused, as if he had only now thought of it.

He didn't have to ponder long, however. A knock came to the door and Dib ran to answer it.

Standing there was a serious looking young woman. Wearing stripes and combat boots, she looked oddly familiar, like that alien girl Tak who he and Zim had run off the planet a short while back. For a moment Dib frowned slightly, trying to remember, but finally shook his head. Nah, this couldn't be Tak. Tak had been much younger. And shorter. And she had different hair. And she had left the planet. Left it for good...

--

Of course, it was indeed Tak, and the shiny object Dib had seen falling had been her spaceship.

Tak had returned to earth to finally take her revenge on Zim, and she had sworn that this time she would not fail. She would take her revenge as well on Dib and Gaz for running her off... and on Gir too, for being there.

Tak didn't forgive.

She was going to run through them all one by one, and she assigned herself the human Dib and his sister Gaz as a warmup exercise in preparation for the main event over at Zim's base. Her eyes now swept the living room in search of a plausible, friendly-sounding reason for them to allow her into their home, and beyond Dib and his father she noticed Gaz lying helpless on the couch. She concealed an evil grin.

Odd, though, she thought; Gaz had looked a bit different the last time she had seen her. She tried to remember an exceptionally intelligent baby messing up her plans the last time she had been here, but decided it was more likely that Dib had two sisters and she had gotten them confused. No matter. Tak would have her revenge! Revenge was what Tak lived for.

"I just moved in to the neighborhood, and my name iiiis... is Kat which is short for Katrina," she now told Membrane, forcing herself to show her least threatening smile. "I'm looking for a, uh, a baby sitting job for weekdays, or weekends... you know... and I only charge, like, 2.00 a day!"

Membrane replied that was a reasonable enough rate... especially as there was no one else on his doorstep at the moment who was looking for a baby sitting job.

Gaz noticed the gleam in the stranger's eye as Tak turned to leave, and immediately began to scream.

"Our little baby has had a big day!" boomed Membrane. "Time for beddy-bye!'

Gaz still wasn't used to going to bed when the sky was still light, and she lay awake for hours wondering what horrors the next day would bring.

--

(A/N) "And now we've got a butterfly in here. Does the whole world know we've got a window open?"

"The insect world sure seems to know."

"Do you know what kind of butterfly this one is?"

"It's a painted fritillary swallowtail."

"Show off!"

"Well, you asked."

"I didn't think you were going to know!"

"Well, I did know, and now you know too."