Chapter 3

Sometimes we can't understand why someone is the way they are. There is a lot of psychology involved in a person's personality. We can't always understand the person's reasoning of doing things, or why they choose to be so stubborn. We can only live in a society full of differences and disagreement. Isn't that what keeps life exciting?

Health class wasn't one of Zim's favorites. He never had this problem with 'difference' or 'disagreement' on his planet. Everyone was programmed to be the same person with same mentalities. The only differences between them were height and facial features, sometimes eye color but that was only on rare occasions. Everyone strived to claim the same goal- domination and impressing their leaders. They didn't have any worries or doubts. It wasn't in their programming.

Even though Health wasn't Zim's favorite subject, it certainly proved to be very useful in understanding the enemy. Unlike biology, health class went into the mentalities of the humans.

He also stole a tampon from a girl's purse and found out what they were for. He didn't want any part of them for his world domination.

The school day seemed to drag on. Math and P.E. were the only classes he had with the Dib human and he had Science with Gaz, who acted like Zim wasn't her partner for today's lesson and did everything on her own. If Zim were to touch anything on the lab's counter, his hand was smacked away. He soon learned his lesson when instead of a slap, his fingers were crushed under a heavy textbook.

The fun started in P.E.

Zim had become accustomed to wearing his gym clothes without his uniform. Although he still wished he could wear the uniform under his gym clothes, he remained comfortable with his gloves and boots. He got away with wearing the boots because he told his gym teacher his parents didn't have money for sneakers.

Heading towards his locker, he spotted Dib having his leg lifted to slip his shoes on the sitting bench. Making sure Dib wouldn't notice him, the invader kept his eyes glued to his own locker as he tossed everything in carelessly, shutting and closing the lock to it. By now, Dib had his back facing him and was walking out to the gym area.

Zim followed Dib out to the gym with the rest of the stinky Earth teens and took his spot on the gym floor. He did his stretches like a civilized being, and not 'accidentally' punching or kicking the teens next to him just because he wanted to hear their howls of pain. High school was very boring, you see.

The gym teacher; old, gray hair, handlebar mustache, huge round belly, stood at the front of the gym blowing into that annoying high pitched whistle of his. Zim hated that whistle. No one knew the gym teacher's name, but they knew he had a criminal record of some sort. He also had a reputation of waiting until someone passed out from an asthma attack to send them to the nurse. He was an asshole of a human. Zim didn't like him.

"Alright," the gym teacher announced loudly, "We're going to play dodgeball-" At that exact moment, all of the male students in the room became yelling incoherently. The only words Zim managed to hear were "dodgeball" and a deep voice yelling "Jimmy!", he himself did not appreciate the game seeing as how he always managed to be used as a target by the other students. "Pick your teams" the gym beast finished, and as soon as he did, it was a frenzy of picking best friends and fighting over the best players.

Zim knew the drill by now but it still was a lot for his PAK to process. Knowing he would not have someone run up to him yelling his name or exclaim how excited they were to have Zim on their team, he waited for the two teams to be picked so he could be put on a team.

The students seemed to quiet down and they were split in two groups. Zim's eyes scanned both teams. The team with the least amount of players would be Zim's team. When he realized what team he would be on, he noticed one of the students was missing.

Zim turned his head and found Dib standing three feet away. The human's stare wasn't on Zim, but on the smaller team.

"So," he thought to himself "The Dib human will be on the same team as Zim."

As if knowing what was going to happen, the team grimaced.

As the whistle was blown, the game began and the students were running to the line to grab a dodgeball. Zim called these students the 'sacrifices' since they were usually the first ones to be hit. Already there were six students who were out. Four on Zim's team, two on the enemy's.

As the balls flew by Zim left and right, he didn't have any time to think. Doing what he did best, Zim let out his famous battle cry and ran to the back corner of his side. He knew the best place was far away from the line and in a place no one really looked. The human's would look everywhere else but the corners because of their lack of focused attention.

No, this wasn't Zim running and hiding. He was waiting until all the other 'teammates' have fallen before he, the greatest player, would come out and catch the other team by surprise, thus winning the battle of the dodgeballs and bringing his team to victory.

As players were 'killed off' one by one, Zim became more and more excited for when he would make his big appearance. Some players avoided the flying balls as best they could, but ended up getting hit anyway. Some were going straight in. Grabbing and throwing the hard red gym balls, causing some students to fall or even get bumps on their heads. Some students were rewarded back in when another would catch a ball. Zim didn't understand this whole concept. It didn't seem to train human pigs well enough for an alien invasion.

Eventually, there were two more players remaining in the game. Zim and the weight lifter, Torque.

Decked in a white tee shirt, sporty white Adidas gym shorts, and a pair of white sneakers, Torque was a walking, talking machine built to do only one thing- destroy!

Pathetic. Even Zim could defeat this beast of meat and muscle, and he planned to.

Zim came out of the corner, a sharp toothed grin had planted itself on his face, and he was prepared for battle.

Torque didn't seem to be bothered by the grin, he simply spun the rubber ball on his finger, "Are we doing this or what?" he asked.

"Oh, we are certainly 'doing this'." He wiggled his fingered evilly. Again, Torque didn't seem bothered by it. "Do not go easy on Zim! Zim has been hit with only the most pain inducing boulders in Invader training, and I can certainly handle the mere weak throws of your red death balls of…death!"

"Whatever."

And that started it. The dodgeball war and begun. Torque was first to throw the one he was previously spinning, Zim had dodged it easily and grabbed another and thrown it at Torque with a grunt.

Torque was easily able to move out of the way of the flying ball and grab another one by his foot. Zim dodged it by sharply arching his back, having to catch himself on his toes to keep from losing his balance. As another ball was thrown at Zim's boot, Zim jumped to dodge it while at the same time doing an underthrow at the weight lifter. The ball bounced off of the floor in front of Torque's feet and he was able to catch it easily as it bounced back up.

By now the students who were seated now watched in awe with jaws dropped as the rubber balls flew from left and right. Some of the students had ice packs held to their heads, or bandaids on arms and legs. One student had lost a tooth and was holding a bloody paper towel in their mouth, but they seemed more interested in the dodgeball fight between Torque and the weird green kid.

As balls flew at Zim in a streak, Zim's eyes had now widened when he realized he didn't have time to react at all. Desperate times call for desperate measures and Zim was now inhumanely distorting his body to dodge these rubber balls.

He ducked out of the way of one, squatting in an animal-like position, then quickly moved his head out of the way of another one. Zim then stood, stretching his legs over a ball aimed at his feet and then bending backwards, arching his whole body in an upside U, grabbing onto his ankles to avoid yet another red ball of death. As another ball went to hit Zim in the face, Zim had let go of his ankles, his legs stretching upwards and then touching the floor so Zim was now standing straight and tall with a hand on his hip as if he had somehow won by dodging all of the hits.

He was surprised when another ball was already heading his way at a fast speed. No time to think or react, Zim decided to contort his body once more, bending backwards at his hips.

It all seemed to go in slow motion at this, as the red ball gently grazed the hair piece of Zim's wig. While this was going on, Zim's eyes had widened, knowing just how close he was to getting hit. Zim stood on one leg, eyeing Torque with only the most competitive look. A look that said "Is that all you have?", hearing the rubber ball bounce off of the wall, he claimed himself as victorious.

What Zim had missed, was that Torque still had one more ball and it was flying towards Zim's face faster than the speed of light, and Zim definitely had no time to react. His eyes widened only momentarily before he flinched away, arms up to block his face from the horrible impact that would surely send the alien flying into the back wall.

However, nothing hit him.

Zim waited to hear the ball collide with the wall, or perhaps he had given the speed of the dodgeball too much credit. Slowly his eyes opened and he wasn't prepared for what he saw.

In front of him was the teen with the pointy hair and the body that seemed to drown in their gym shirt. They stood tall, holding a red dodgeball with both hands with feet firmly placed shoulder length apart. All of the students, even Torque, stopped and stared. They knew what happened.

Dib Membrane had helped his arch nemesis.


"What was that?" Zim found himself thinking. Concentration proved useless and he would gladly accept the failing grade, he didn't study anyway.

The question rang in Zim's mind repeatedly like a million tiny bells as he tried to think of some reasoning behind what he saw. Images of the gymnasium and Dib's body standing in front of his own flashed through his mind. The back of Dib's head and the dodgeball in his hands. Zim groaned quietly, grabbing his head and putting it down momentarily on his desk.

He peeked an eye at Dib who was sitting in the front row on his left, right next to the large windows. Zim was in the front row on his right. Some things never change. Zim was assigned the front row because he had an issue screaming every time the air vent went on. Somehow putting him in the front row helped with that. Perhaps because he wasn't as close to it so the vent wasn't exactly as loud as it was before.

Dib hunched over his desk, taking his time to answer each question on the test. The older teen raised a hand to scratch at the sores on the side of his face, which were an angry red from irritation. His bony hand scritched his pencil back and forth on the test paper.

Zim tapped his pencil on his desk. His teacher had told him countless times about tapping his pencil but right now he couldn't help but do it as his mind tried to work around the reasoning for Dib's actions or if what he saw was real. Sometimes PAKs malfunctioned and made Irkens see things that aren't necessarily there. On Earth it was called hallucinating, but they used a different word for it on Irk.

But no. Zim never had issues with hallucinations. The only time a PAK was to malfunction in such a way was when there was too much going on at once for the Irken and they either saw, heard, or smelled something that wasn't there. Zim was calm, there wasn't really anything to make him stress so much into malfunctioning.

Zim looked back at his paper, figuring he would never get it started. About to crumble up the test, a sudden bang made him jump in his seat. The bang sounded like a textbook hitting the floor and then the sound of a wooden pencil being dropped. One of the girls in the classroom screamed, and someone else whispered "oh my gosh". Zim looked to his left and was unsure how to react.

The human, Dib, was laying face down on his desk, arms dangling at his sides, fingers uncurled having also dropped his pencil on the floor. A spot of blood could be seen on the human's test paper and it seemed to grow only slightly.

Zim could only stare in horror as the other students started whispering to each other. No one, only Zim, realized the body didn't move in even the slightest.

Almost as if it wasn't breathing.