Dib stood in the pristine, beautiful, unspoiled woodland populated by pristine, beautiful trees which were all in spring blossom as beautiful unspoiled sunlight dappled to the pristine, unspoiled forest floor and birds called around all pristine and unspoiled-like.

Despite the sickening pleasantness of this totally real and not-at-all metaphorical setting, Dib allowed himself a small moment of jealousy of the birds, who, while sounding all sweet and innocent and being featured incessantly in many child-friendly movies such as Snow White and Call Me By Your Name, are actually, and we all know this, getting ready to bang. But Dib kept this moment of jealousy small because he had already gotten all that out in the angst chapter, and he did not want to populate this fic so heavily with angst that Scholastic would claim it as a book in the Animorphs series.

But before Dib could start to lament about the lackluster and disappointing ending that series had, a hooded figure darted into the clearing and disappeared into the lush forboding arboreal darkness. Well, of course he had to follow it. No idiot would put on a flowing hooded cape and run hurriedly through the woods with their arms tucked to their chest if they didn't want a throng of answer-seeking protagonists swarming them within minutes.

So Dib plunged into the forest after the figure, and in seconds the forest morphed into a dark, brooding, owl-infested hellhole of a natural area, as if this place was actually, and you may want to sit down here, not real and, yet more shocking, metaphorical. It might even have been a dream, although this hypothesis had little supporting evidence except for the fact that nothing so far in this chapter made any goddamn sense and it was written in italics. Dib squinted as low-hanging branches slapped his face, but he continued after the figure because… well, because.

Suddenly, Dib tripped over a beaver and crashed tragically to the cold floor. He cursed. The fog in this forest was getting excessive. This was almost Twilight levels of fog.

Dib's face contorted with horror as he realized what he had just done. He tried desperately to pull his psyche out of that area of his brain, but it was too late. A crashing sound came from behind him, and from the bland indistinct fog emerged a huge werewolf with an extremely well-developed set of pecs.

"Hey there," the werewolf said. "Are you depressed because you can't be with your current supernatural boyfriend for some bullshit reason?"

"No," Dib said, trying to ward him off.

But the werewolf was way too empathic to fall for that. "I can help with that. Here, I can hold you close and warm you up with my body heat. Did you know a dog's body temperature is a hundred-and-one degrees Fahrenheit (or thirty-eight point three degrees Celsius)? Not that I'm a dog," he let out a seductive growl. "Unless you want me to be."

"Go away," Dib said. "I'm trying to follow a plot thread, here."

The werewolf flexed his biceps in anger. Dib looked away to avoid becoming attracted to him and adding more unnecessary fluff to this story.

"Fine, then," the werewolf snorted. "I'll just covet your future hideous alien-hybrid child." And with that he loped caninely away.

Resolving never again to read anything "ironically", Dib pulled himself up and ran again through the thicket. He ran for what seemed like dozens of seconds through dark, dingy, monotonous woods, and was beginning to wonder whether he would ever find the mysterious figure in this unnavigable terrain when he stumbled into a perfectly round clearing with the hooded figure kneeled in the center, head down, facing away, with beams of sunlight falling dramatically onto the figure's back and illuminating just enough to distinguish this location from the rest of the woods but still keeping most everything in shadowy fog.

Sensing Dib's presence, the figure slowly began to turn towards him. This was it; Dib was finally going to know, after all these minutes of searching, who this was. The milliseconds ticked by like hours as the figure slowly reached for their hood, but Dib knew it would all be worth it when their face was finally revealed in the most dramatic way possible—

"Jesus, what took you so long?" Zim's voice came from inside the hood. He pulled the cloak off over his head, bunched it up in his arms and threw it to the floor. "I've been kneeling here dramatically for like seven minutes."

"Sorry. I got… distracted," Dib said. "Anyway BWAAAAAAAAAAHH?!" The hooded figure was Zim the whole time!?

But there was something off about Zim. After using trigonometric principles to make deductions based on the length of his and Zim's shadows and the approximate position of the Sun, Dib determined that Zim was the same height as he (Dib). Dib then realized that he was ten or twelve or however old he was in the show again.

There was another rustling in the bushes, and out stepped another Dib! But this one was fourteen or eighteen or however old he is in this story, but the point is that he was totally hot! And he wasn't wearing a shirt omg.

"Omg you are so hot omg," Zim said, waving his hands around excitedly.

"Hey, thanks," the-Dib-we've-been-following said.

"Hey, quiet, you," Sexy Shirtless Dib said. "He was talking to me."

"LIES!" Zim said. "Heh. No, just kidding. I was talking to you, older, sexy Dib."

Then Zim and Sexy Shirtless Dib started making out, and it was soooo hot, but this chapter is getting a little long, so I suggest you go back to one of the previous make-out scenes if you want to get a feel for the moment.

"Oh, Zim," Sexy Shirtless Dib said. "It's too bad that other guy keeps getting in the way of our truuuueee loooooove."

"Um, am I in the way?" Not-Sexy Dib said. "Should I leave?"

"No! Pay attention! This is a metaphor and it's teaching you stuff about yourself so you can achieve happiness in real life," Zim said. "Anyway, yes, Sexy Dib, it's too bad, but at least we can meet here and be together!"

"Watching myself make out with an alien is going to help me achieve happiness?" Not-Sexy Dib questioned.

"Yes! It's a metaphor!" Sexy Shirtless Dib said. Then, he said to Zim "Here isn't enough! I—"

"Metaphor for what?" Not-Sexy Dib asked.

"Okay, do we need to spell it out for you?" Zim expressed. "He's your lust-filled, attractive sexiness drive, and you're the wuss cockblocker drive that wants to keep us apart. We're all parts of your consciousness, and—"

"Wait, so one part of my consciousness likes to watch another part of my consciousness make out with yet a third part of my consciousness?" Dib deduced. "How the hell does that help me achieve happiness?"

"NO!" Sexy Shirtless Dib exhaled. "That's NOT what this is! And you're not supposed to LIKE watching us! You're supposed to get jealous and want to be the one licking Zim's face and such, thus proving that being with Zim is what you truly want."

"I'm alright with watching," Not-Sexy Dib said.

"Okay, look," Sexy Shirtless Dib said, exasperated. "I'm hot, and you're not. So that means that I'm the better version of you. So I'm right." He went back to making out with Zim.

"Oh my God, you're right!" Not-Sexy Dib said. "I have to fix this!"

"Yol. Gef en o lul thethiez," Sexy Shirtless Dib said.

"What?" Not-Sexy Dib said.

Sexy Shirtless Dib took his tongue out of Zim's mouth. "Give in to your desires," he clarified.

The hot werewolf crashed through the bushes into the clearing, wagging his tail hopefully.

"Not those desires, please," Zim requested. The werewolf hung his head and loped off sulkily.

"Fine, but could we get Ruth Bader Ginsburg in here?" Sexy Shirtless Dib reciprocated.

"Hey, babe," came a legal and justice-y voice from just outside the clearing.

"Hey. Good to see you again," Sexy Shirtless Dib nodded to her.

"Let's get unconstitutional!"

"…Anyway," Not-Sexy Dib concluded. "I think the message here is that I should get back together with Zim. I think."

"Yeah, you do that," Sexy Shirtless Dib said absentmindedly. And then, just in time to avoid a scene that would pose a risk of bumping this fic to an M rating, Dib woke up.