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Author's Note:

Invader Zim is -c- Jhonen Vasquez! Only the events of this story (and the character tweaking, heh) are mine. :3

~Jizena~

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Gaz's Records

By the time I turned eleven, I realized it was pretty much useless to cry over past events. In fact, much of the year before I turned twelve was spent trying to forget the feelings that I had developed during the Incident. Sometimes, I succeeded, sometimes, I failed horribly. But it was true that I had other things to worry about, such as a growth spurt of my own; my brother wasn't the only one getting taller anymore, once I was just about to enter my teenage years.

The two years after the Incident actually seemed to fly by. Before I knew it, Dib (now standing at an even 5'5") and I (behind at 5'2") were sitting at a booth in the downtown sushi bar, celebrating his thirteenth birthday. We'd long since given up on thinking our father would even mention our birthdays to us, so my brother and I had grown accustomed to finding small ways to celebrate. This year, since I was a little short of money, I simply offered to pay for lunch, which he said was more than sufficient.

"This is pretty funny," I observed, stirring my soy sauce around with my pinkie.

"What?" Dib wondered. "That waitress who just tripped and dropped an octopus roll down that guy's shirt?"

"Well, that and..." I let go and let myself snicker a bit. "I haven't eaten sushi since then."

"Whe—oh." Dib finished what he'd started eating, then asked, "How... are you, by the way? I don't think I've asked in a while." He cleared his throat after saying that; his voice was already changing.

"Oh, I'm fine," I shrugged. The subtext: I made myself be 'fine.' Merely 'fine.' But I had suppressed love and loss before, and I was over being emotional. Sometimes, alone, I'd pine, I'd obsess, I'd stare at that box for hours, sometimes at the cost of a decent night's sleep, but the rest of the world did not deserve to see me fall into the heartbreak trap. "More importantly, what's up with your rivalry, anyway? Has he even pulled anything on you lately? At school last year or anything over the..."

"I didn't tell you?" Dib exclaimed, his eyes widening. "I thought for sure I'd told you!"

"Does this have something to do with why you haven't been dragging me along on your weird missions lately?" I guessed.

"Gaz... Zim didn't come to school... at all last semester," Dib said quietly.

"WHAT?" I practically shouted, startled beyond measure. I shrank down and hissed across the table, "Are you serious? Where is he?"

"That's just the thing... I don't know!" my brother told me, seeming nervous. "His base is still there, I know that much, but... I haven't even seen GIR or the Voot around anywhere. Either he's getting better or I'm getting worse... or he's somewhere else on Earth or... or he just left, or..."

"Or?" I asked hopefully, meeting Dib's gaze.

His eyes softened, and he sighed. "Gaz, I don't think that's possible," he said, knowing my thoughts exactly.

"It happened before!" I refuted. "Why couldn't it happen again?"

Dib looked around, then leaned across the table to speak to me. "Gaz, I... haven't been completely honest with you over the past couple of years," he admitted painfully.

"What?" I asked flatly, raising an eyebrow and glaring at my brother, ready to rip off his arms and legs and reattach them in different sockets.

"Well, I just... I just didn't want to hurt you, you know?" he tried to cover, looking nervous. "Last year, I... when I was tailing Zim, I... I learned a couple of things I don't think I was supposed to know."

"Like what?" I wondered.

"Well the most important thing was..." Dib slapped a hand to his forehead. "I should have told you this a while ago, but I didn't want you to get too excited." Meeting my gaze again, he said, "Remember how we both returned from the Incident with something seemingly vital to each of us? The items for you and the repairs on Tak's Runner for me? Well, Zim kept something with him as well..." lowering his voice to a near whisper, he finished, "...his conscience."

My eyes widened and I sat back. Suddenly, my eyes began burning with tears. "Why didn't you tell me..?" I asked, my voice wavering.

"I told you, Gaz, I didn't want to hurt you or excite you!"

"What else did you learn?" I demanded.

"All I know is that... well, he, um... had sort of an antidote that helped him regulate his human mind," Dib explained, "allowing him to return mostly to the way he was before the Incident. It seemed to me, though, that he was giving into his human conscience a lot more willingly than he would have liked. He... asked about you."

My heart skipped. "Really?" I wondered.

"Something about... is she okay or something," Dib said, thinking back. "It's his arm. You know, where Tak cut him during the Incident. That's keeping him from being completely the person he was before."

"I hate to say I told you so, Dib," I said evenly, "but... idiot! You didn't believe me when I told you that something was wrong with his arm still! I remember two years ago, you—"

"Okay, okay, you win," Dib gave in, holding up a hand. "Sorry for not believing you, Gaz, really."

"So..." I said after a pause, "what do you think is going to happen now?"

"I couldn't say," my brother replied. There was another, longer pause, then he announced, "Gaz, I'm going to use the rest of this summer finding answers."

"How?" I spat. "Zim isn't here."

"I don't mean here on Earth," Dib clarified. My heart stopped. "It's high time I put Tak's Runner to really good use, wouldn't you say?"

"You mean you're just going to leave?" I exclaimed. "What the hell am I going to do?"

"I'll try not to be too long," said Dib, "but I'll need you here in case I have to contact you, you know? And that way you can be at my computer in case something happens to the Runner out... who knows where."

"Forget it, Dib," I scowled, folding my arms. "I'm not gonna be your intergalactic grease monkey. Hire someone."

"Oh, come on, Gaz," he pleaded. "You're the only one who knows I'm telling the truth about all this anyway."

"What'll I get for it?" I asked. "I expect generous compensation for, first of all, staying at home alone and covering for you in case Dad wonders where you are, and secondly for helping you out from lightyears away."

"Buy you a new guitar," he offered.

I raised an eyebrow.

"Seriously?" I asked.

"Or I'll just give you the money for it, I guess," said Dib, grinning. "Half now, half when I get back from my travels, just so I know you won't bail."

I thought for a minute. "That and," I added (I loved striking deals), "you give me any and all information about Zim the second you hear it. Got that?"

"Sure do. So you'll do it?" he asked hopefully.

I rolled my eyes. "I guess I don't really have a choice," I gave in. "I'll help you."

"Thanks, Gaz!"

– – –

Later that night, Dib was making final adjustments to Tak's Runner to make sure nothing went wrong when he broke out of orbit. I saw a lot of sense in his wanting to make the trip as soon as possible: first, it was more logical, seeing as we didn't know what we were up against anymore (if anything), and second, he was getting so tall, he'd eventually have to make modifications on the interior of the ship. He already had, a little, I noticed. Not much, but enough to allow for a little more comfort in flight.

"You're not taking off tonight, are you?" I asked, standing in the garage doorway.

"Are you kidding me?" Dib returned from his position underneath the Runner. "That'd be pretty stupid of me," he laughed. "Dad's home and everything."

He slid out from underneath the Runner and grabbed a towel, wiping off his hands and glasses. "I guess that'll do it," he announced proudly, standing and taking a look at the ship. "All the kinks have been worked out, and I finally debugged it, so Tak's personality interface won't cut in anymore."

"Will that affect the flying?" I wondered.

"Shouldn't," Dib answered. He laughed. "You have become caught up in this."

"So what," I shrugged. "It's unavoidable, I guess. I just don't want to go to war."

"War?" Dib wondered.

"It's bound to happen, isn't it?" I said. "I mean... if Zim is getting better, a-as an Invader," I went on, with some difficulty, "he'll realize he's supposed to be after the entire planet, not just our little section. That'll bring in the rest of the Irkens. Isn't that what an Invasion is? Full-on war, fighting for control of a planet... or... whatever?"

"True," Dib agreed. "Now if only the Swollen Eyeball Network would believe us," he grumbled. "We have some ex-army members, or so I've been told; we could potentially fight. Right now it just seems like Earth wants to just lie back and take it in the ass, you know?"

I laughed at my brother's word choice. "Something will make them believe you," I assured him. "Seriously. They'll come crying to you once the Irkens start firing."

Dib shuddered. "What if it's too late by then?" he wondered.

"Hmmm."

He shrugged. "I just wish there was something I could do," he sighed. "Eh. I'll worry about that later. Let's get back inside."

– – –

I couldn't sleep at all. I was awake until the sun rose, just lying in my bed, thinking about everything that had happened since Zim first came to Earth, and everything that could potentially happen to us in the months and years to come.

How long would it take? How long would it take for others to start believing us? I was getting more and more concerned about the threat of Invasion and possible annihilation.

Above all else, I found myself thinking about how much I wished Zim was still human. It was almost like a dream now. Those eight days had passed so quickly, it very well could have been a dream, and everything I'd written down in my journals would have been nothing but an elaborate fantasy.

I almost believed it, too. I started to think I was going crazy. And then I found the note tucked away in my third journal... and the items that had somehow stayed with me. I had no idea what it could possibly mean. The deep recesses of my mind begged and pleaded for me to take everything as a sign. Whether or not the items I had taken back with me would prove helpful or useful to me in the future was a debate I constantly had with myself. Perhaps it meant that I was supposed to, someday, give them back to Zim.

That, someday, he would be human again.

God, what would I even do? I wondered. Sure, I longed for it, with every fiber of my being, but I had only worked myself up to that point. I wanted him to be human. So that I could feel wanted by someone again. So that I could feel pretty. So that I could have a friend. So that I could tell him...

...what?

Tell him what? Somehow, I felt like 'love' was too strong a word now. I was too far removed from the Incident to be sure. Now that Dib had told me Zim was possibly gone from the planet all together, I doubted myself even more. I already knew, it was Zim's human side I'd fallen in love with, anyway. Suppose that had left him, now that he had been Irken again for a good two years? I was probably hoping too much... those eight days couldn't have effected him too profoundly.

...Right?

Still, I held onto what hope I had. I wanted to hold on to something.

That night, before Dib left, I started thinking about my mother. I wasn't even sure why at the time. I began wondering if things would be different if she were still around. But I barely even remembered what she looked like... I could barely remember the sound of her voice. All I knew was that I somehow reminded Dad and my brother of her. Probably my hair, I always told myself. Or something.

I also remembered a few things she'd said to me, even though my last memory of her was from the night before she walked out, when I was three years old. I remembered when she sang to me, and a few sayings that sounded rather cliché to me at times, but when I thought about their meanings, I saw how true they were... or at least how true I wanted them to be.

"Anyone who has ever loved has earned a soul."

That's what she'd told me the day before she left us. I heard it in my mind now as clear as day: Mom's mid-range, sonorous, Finnish-accented voice, with a cadence that suggested every phrase she spoke was a song. Her operatic tone only helped me believe her words further... everything she had ever said was woven like a fairy tale, everything from "Good morning, dear," to, "When one is weak, he must learn to trust." Almost a decade had passed and still I remember those words as though she'd spoken them to me every night.

I wanted those words to be true more than anything. "Anyone who has ever loved has earned a soul." I wanted so badly to know that Zim could still earn a soul... since he seemed to have wanted one during the Incident, because he feared only death. And he loved me.

– – –

"Well, I guess this is it, then," Dib said, opening the cockpit of the Spittle Runner. "I'll try not to make it too much longer than a week, all right?"

"If you learn anything at all about Zim..." I prompted.

"I'll let you know," my brother smiled. "You'll cover for me, right?"

"No problem," I said. "Oh. My money." I extended my right palm.

Dib rolled his eyes and dug into his wallet, emptying its contents. "That's about half," he told me. "I'll get the rest to you when I come back."

I grinned and pocketed the cash, then looked up at the sky, shielding my eyes from the sun. "For some reason, I'd like to go with you," I admitted. "I'd imagine it's amazing out there."

"Another time... I promise I'll bring you with me, Gaz," Dib let me know. His voice sounded sincere, so I held him to his word. "I shouldn't be gone any longer than a week," he said. "If I am, just call."

"And I contact the Runner from your computer, right?" I wondered.

"Right... though I think our watches should work just fine," Dib answered, jumping into the cockpit and revving up the ship's engines. "Well..." he said with a sigh, "see you, then."

I felt a sting in my chest, and my heart began to race. I didn't know what my brother was about to face, and it scared me. Though I wanted to go with him more than I thought I would, I knew that the only way I could truly help him was to stay at home.

"Good luck," I wished him. Then, in almost an instant, he was gone.

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IZMS Part One: Changes will continue next Friday, May 6th! :3 That's it for the intro, now on to the full story...!