Sorry for the delay in this chapter, I've been super busy at work and I have some stuff I've been taking care. I took my time to make sure this chapter came out awesome for you all so I hope you enjoy.

And as always, feel free to share this around!


Dib raced up to his room and fumbled through his bag and cabinets, finally getting hold of his notes he had made on Zim over the years. He quickly flipped through the pages, skimming through his own nonsensical babbling that he had written on those frustrating days as a kid. After a few seconds of glancing down each page, he found something that might help. Running downstairs as fast as he could, trying not to trip as he ran, he shouted to Gaz. "Okay, I think I found something that might help! It's from when I broke into his base a few years ago; it says that there was a room that looked like a laboratory or medical room. If we go there, there's bound to be some medical supplies to help him out."

"No...too dangerous," Zim grumbled out, struggling to speak through the pain.

Gaz glanced down with concern and slight relief that Zim was conscious now. "Why, what happened to you back there? We tried asking your robot buddy over there but he was making no sense."

Zim gestured Gir over. "Gir...play memory." He choked out, each word stinging him as they escaped his bruised body.

Gir saluted as his eyes turned red and then back to normal as he gave a dumb smile. "OKIE DOKIE!" His eyes projected out the memory as a hologram for Gaz and Dib to see.

Gaz and Dib watched carefully, seeing The Monkey Show from Gir's perspective and then a massive explosion. A system down flashed for a few seconds before the recording continued; everything now at an angle. Tak or, well, Hass stepped over the robot's frame and then started to throw everything around as Hass seemed to be looking for something. Zim came up, but there was no audio since Gir's systems were down. All they could tell that they were arguing and the rest was followed by Hass savagely beating Zim until he discovered the way in Zim's base.

Dib and Gaz retained a dumbfounded expression as there was still a lot of context missing from the video. "So why did Tak do that? I know she hates you, but she's never been so personal and brutal with her attacks." Dib asked.

"It's not...Tak..." He gasped and winced in pain as he sat up slowly, seeming to handle his pain a bit better now.

"Dib, right now we don't have time to figure out what happened. We need to patch him up." She said straining herself to sound calm at the sight of Zim in this condition.

"Well we can't take him to a hospital for obvious reasons, his base is not safe right now, and we have no idea what we're doing when it comes to this so what do I exactly do Gaz?" Dib replied sarcastically. "There's no real way to handle this right now without taking some sort of risk."

"I'm not gonna argue with you right now." She said, trying to focus on the situation at hand. "Let's just try to do the best we can, okay?"

"Alright." Dib sighed and let go of some of his frustration. "I'll go get some medical supplies and we'll just have to see how he reacts to certain things unless Zim has knowledge of the effects of human medical supplies on Irkens."

"No, it is all quite fine. My pak was unscathed in all of it so I will be just fine, don't worry. All the things I need are already with me, it will just take a little longer than I would like without my full medical services."

Gaz looked down and then back up at Zim who was now leaning against the wall in the living room. "I don't know what the hell is going on, but whatever it is, it's not good..."

"Well regardless, we need to know what happened back there so I'm gonna look at the video footage from the cameras I planted at his base." Zim sighed and just gave him an annoyed expression. "Heh...sorry, old habits… At least it helped out this time though?" Zim just kept starting as Dib in the unpleasant silence. "I'm gonna go now… I'll be right back."

Zim's eyes were shut tight with pain and Gaz watched him helplessly as she could do nothing. The pinkish parts on his pak lightly glowed and a faint beeping could be heard as it worked hard to heal Zim up. Gaz looked at his bruises and welts from his beating, his skin slightly pulsing as his body was being pumped full of chemicals to accelerate his healing. Not wanting to just sit by and watch, she grabbed a small cloth and began to clean him up a bit. Zim moaned in pain as she cleaned off the dust and debris from his face and shirt. Some of the damage he sustained seeing to have caused internal pain too since there were places that were especially tender to touch.

"Alright Zim, I'm gonna have to get all of the cuts so I need to lean you forward, get ready."

Zim nodded and, after taking a quick breath, Gaz grabbed his arm to pull him up. Zim winced with pain as he leaned forward and pulled his knees to his chest. Gaz pulled up the back of his shirt to reveal an array of welts and scars, some old, some new, all speaking years of damage and pain.

'Wow, Zim has been to hell and back within his lifetime...' She thought as she wiped the blood off.

Gaz cleaned him off in total silence, not sure what to really say about everything as she hadn't quite figured it all out herself yet. "Alright, put your legs down now. I need to get your front now." She said, breaking the silence after a few minutes.

"Alright, one second." Zim slowly leaned back, straightened his legs out, and took off his shirt before leaning back on his arms for support. She began to wipe off the wounds on his torso, noticing more scars, these ones looking ever more intense and deeper than the others, but she remained quiet about them, not wanting to intrude on his past.

Zim winced with pain as she dabbed and wiped up the blood, but paused when she noticed a particularly opened up wound. "I'll be back in a second, I'm gonna grab something to get this closed up for you." She left the room and came back with a needle and thread in her hand.

"What's that for?" Zim asked with a bit of a nervous look.

Gaz giggled a little. "Your has really high-tech equipment for everything huh? It's for the larger cuts on your body, I'm just gonna sew it up for you."

"I am not one hundred percent sure that I trust you to do that...plus my pak should be fine to do that." He said, backing up to the wall as she walked over with the needle.

"Oh don't be such a whiner, it's not going to be so bad." She sat down next to him. "Plus it'll keep you from getting more of these nasty scars. Now, you might feel a little-"

"GAAAHHH!" Zim screamed out loud.

"...pinch."

"And humans do this every time you get severely injured?!" Zim questioned, sounding irritated. "No wonder you all are out of your minds, you would need to be insane to develop a healing practice such as this!"

"Well, normally we take an anesthetic before we do this, but seeing as we're a difficult situation and your bizarre reaction to anything humans have, I don't think painkillers or morphine are a good idea. So yeah." Focusing on closing the gap in the flesh, Gaz tried her best to fill in the awkward silence. "So how are you already able to talk? Humans would take hours or even days to talk after a beating like that, even with medical attention."

"Well as I said earlier, my pak helps me heal at a more advanced rate than humans. That's why I can be in the rain for a short amount of time without severe damage to myself. Plus most of my kind are genetically engineered to be genetically superior in our vision." He clenched his hands as he felt the needle poke through his skin again and again. "But you can see how far our technology can only go. It's far from perfect."

Dib finally came back down only to see Gaz in front of a shirtless Zim in his living room. "Well, everything that happened makes a lot more sense turns out- What's going on here!?" Dib screeched as his face turned a bit red in anger.

"Calm your tits, Dib, I'm just stitching him up," Gaz answered.

"Yes, calm your mammary glands, Dib. She's merely assisting in my healing." Zim added.

Gaz let out a small chuckle at Zim's comment and asked. "So what did you find out?"

"Well, unfortunately, my cameras weren't functioning at the point of attack as they were offline but I managed to get them back on. For some reason, Tak or whoever that was, contacted the irken leaders."

"No, well it seems like this problem has elevated to a much more critical state." Zim pushed Gaz's hands down and bit off the end of the thread, put his shirt back on, and stood up slowly.

"So what did happen if that was Tak, but not Tak?" Dib asked him, still out of the loop.

"She has Gaz's necklace and she put it on like an idiot. The chip that the pendant has managed to upload it's consciousness onto her pak and is now in control of her, and knowing that she has the computer systems to know what it is, she ignored the warnings her AI would have issued. The name that consciousness gave me was Hass, and judging by the sound of it, a male irken."

"So is Tak still there or is she gone forever?" Dib interrupted, sounding a little distressed before realizing how he sounded and recomposing himself. "Um...not that I care. She's just a dumb alien."

Zim stared at him for a second and continued on. "Well anyway, he's been at my base long enough to figure out how to work and hack into my database. So he's probably already armed himself with some of my more advanced weaponry, and as you have already said, contacted the tallests. Not only that, but he most likely has a higher brain capacity since he was able to take control of Tak's pak meaning he can use her implant to control almost anyone; so until I find a way to counteract the implant you need to steer clear of Tak...er Hass."

"Why do you care so much?" Dib asked.

"Well as dumb as it sounds, earth has become more of a home than any other place I have been in my entire life, it's more logical to protect this planet and save what it can offer. I may not like you and vice versa, but Gaz would be upset if you were to be hurt. By the way, if we encounter a situation where I have to make a choice between saving two out of the three of us, don't be surprised if you're left to die."

Dib growled and Gaz smiled. "Noted," Dib grumbled, looking at Gaz out the corner of his eye.

"Well if we're going to stop him we need to make preparations and weapons. Until then, you two can continue to go to school, but I need to stay here since I no longer have my base. I'll try to make myself scarce around you, Dib if it compensates. I'll also try to keep Gir under control...if it's possible." Zim said.

"There is no way you are staying here!" Dib yelled.

"Zim, has no other place to go and there's no other place on the planet that has the technology to create the stuff he'll...we'll need to fight Hass and God knows what else," Gaz spoke up, putting Dib back in his place. "If you have such genius idea on where he can go and what he can do, speak up." She raised an eyebrow, the one eye open and giving Dib and expectant look as she waited for a response.

Dib stopped for a moment and sighed. "Fine, but he better keep to his promise and I better not regret my decision." He waved his hand and them dismissively as he walked away.

"Thank you, Dib..." Zim said before he left the room, shocking Did with his sincerity.

Dib stopped at the hallway entrance and looked over his shoulder as he "Just a few rules first. No exploding stuff, no experiments after eleven because I don't feel like staying up all night with the sound of a welder, and stop with the pranks."

Zim sighed at the last rule. "Fine."

Dib left the room and Zim sat down on the couch, Gaz vaulting over the back of is and plopping down next to him. "So what now?"

"What do you mean?" Zim asked as he stared up at the ceiling blankly.

"What are you going to do about Hass? They could be up to anything now and there's no telling what preparations they're making for your leader's invasion." Gaz pointed.

"You know, for the first time in a long time, I don't know. There's a lot going on now and I just need to relax while I try to recover, I'll come up with a plan after I'm better." He laid down and put his arms behind his head.

This mentality put Gaz off, Zim's never been like this before. Seeing him like this just worried her more than when he was beaten up. "Hey, uh Zim?"

She caught his attention immediately as Zim wasn't used to hearing her say his name. "Yes?"

"Just so you know, um, if you need someone to talk to, I'm here." She gave a faint smile and he nodded back at her, not saying anything back.

What to do about Hass, the tallest, the inevitable invasion that was impeding on earth. How to fix all of this before the picture got too big for just Zim and Dib to fix. This was the pressing issue they were facing now and this was more prevalent than ever before. Without the base, there was no way to get any tech that was on par with the empire. These thoughts all ran through Dib's head as he thought about the true scale of what is taking place. "Maybe I can get some help, I don't have to do this completely alone…" Dib looked over at the small laptop, it had been years since he's found anything worthy of contacting them, proven by how faded that superimposed eye logo had become. However, if there was any situation where they needed to be involved, this was it.