Zim awoke from his beating several hours later, disoriented and somewhat astonished to find that there was a thin trickle of blood oozing from his mouth. Still disoriented and confused, Zim shakily stood on his feet and glanced about the room, gasping as he took in sight what had once been a somewhat orderly room.
"What happened?" he asked himself aloud before suddenly remembering the event a few hours earlier. As he thought of what had occured, his eyes narrowed to slits, a faint tint of red all that was visible in the dim lit room. Many of the prisoners shrank into dark corners and crevices to escape Zim's piercing glare. Zim chuckled to himself at seeing the reaction of them and looked at the cell's now torn door.
"So you've come back have you, Zrorx. Back to finish what was once started so many years ago on my first mission... Well you won't ruin what I've created... not this time. I'll have you yet and when I do... all will bow to Zim!!" he screamed his last statement to the ceiling in a triumphant manner, raising his black gloved fist above his head as he yelled. His maniacal laughter soon filled the vast cavern of underground space, reverberrating off the walls and making the many prisoners shudder in their cells.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

As the trio continued to run on into the darkness of the night, having escaped Zim's vast and torturous concentration camp, Dib took in the features of the new, now somewhat dead, imprisoned world with a sense of shock as well as gratefulness.
"It feels good to be on the outside again," he commented as the group slowed down to a walk once they were out of the vicinity of Zim's reach. His two companions nodded sagely in agreement and for the first time in many many years, Gaz ran to her brother, embracing him in a loving hug.
"G-Gaz..." Dib stuttered in bewilderment as she nearly crushed him with her deep embrace. "Wh-wha?"
"Oh, Dib! I thought you were dead!" she weeped into his shoulder as he hugged her back. "When Zim gained control, you'd been away for at least a year and no one knew anything of your whereabouts. Everyone assumed Zim had done away with you and hid the evidence, having no one to oppose him."
"It's okay, Gaz... I'm okay," Dib half smiled at his sister in an attempt to cheer her up. "What matters now is that we're back together, brother and sister. And now that you know that I am right about Zim, what matters is that we three find a way to stop him..." Dib trailed off looking at the stranger who had saved his life as well as his sister's. "Who are you?" Dib tilted his head slightly to one side, narrowing his eyes a bit.
The placid creature turned to face them, his mighty wings slightly drooping in sorrow.
"It's beautiful isn't it?" It asked them, as if looking past them into the starry heavens behind and above them. The other two looked in his direction, up toward the Milky Way.
"It is beautiful," Gaz and Dib said simultaineously as their eyes span the vast reaches of space.
At hearing those words, the creature unfolded it's massive wings as it rested by a tree and ajusted to the squishy ground with its still green grass. It cast its starry gaze away from the sparkling sky and hung its head as if in mourning.
"I miss those journeys," he (or so both Dib and Gaz assumed at this point that it was really a he) sighed. "Magical voyages across the Galactic Laylines and near impossible jumps between dimensions... There were so many things that I can remember, so very very long ago."
"Say..." Dib interjected. "Who are you anyway?"he tilted his head the other direction out of curiousity.
The creature nodded politely guesturing that it would indeed answer Dib's question. Gaz politely looked up from not her Game Slave, which had been left behind in her search for her brother, but from a book she'd found to be quite entertaining. She casually shut the book and lay it down on the grass beside her. The creature nodded again that he was ready and let out a weak cough before speaking.
"Friends, my name is Zrorx. I am a Xyrian from the 7th galaxy, near the constellation you earthlings call austrailius picses. I came as an undercover ops, a spy if you will, to observe and study that meglomaniacal twit, Zim. Unfortunately, over years of seeing him fail time and time again in his wretched little missions, I underestimated his power. He managed the unthinkable and I was supposed to stop him. I failed. For the first time, I have failed my people as well as Earth's. Your planet reminds me so much of my own... the resemblance is uncanny. I miss my home and I miss my people. And the bad thing is, friends, is that Zim intends on destroying my world and enslaving it just as he has here. But in order to achieve his goal, he must kill Yzork, our wonderful and charismatic leader. If he kills Yrork, then all is lost for our world as well as yours. Yrork poses a threat to the alien's health quite literally. Yrork possesses a power of unknown origin as do I. I second him in strength and so was chosen to be his second if anything were ever to happen to him."
"But," Dib interjected the Xyrian's tale. "if you're the second to Yrork, what would it matter if something were to happen to your majesty?"
The creature smiled at Dib in wonderment and generous good nature. "If I were to take over for Yrork in the event of something such as his death, there would be no problem, naturally. Unfortunately, there arises a conflict between the people of Xyri and Zim himself. Through his rather ingenius studies and groundbreaking research, Zim has discovered that no amount of brute force or intelligence could outdo Yrork. His only chance was finding a loophole of sorts to go through to accomplish his evil deeds. Sadly, he discovered the so called 'loophole' through quantum technology and the use of a radioactive substance by the name of Zryonium. Zryonium is one of the most elusive and expensive ores to possess in the entire universe, but somehow Zim managed to get his grimy little gloved hands on it. He's created a trans-dimensional time space continuium using what he knows of quantum technology and is currently using the portal itself in addition with the Zryonium to establish a very accurate and very deadly wavelength, measured out in time."
As the Xyrian ended his tale, Gaz rose to her feet and blinked uncomprehendingly at him.
"Oh my, so that's what all the paperwork I've been doing is all about," she exclaimed in a very hidden manner. "I suppose I shouldn't have been suprised. It's just like Zim to pull off something of this magnitude."
She scoffed at the thought of Zim and readjusted her hair and sat down next to her brother once again.
"So Zim's planning on destroying the planet with the use of quantum tech and Zyronium?" Dib threw back his head at the thought and laughed. Both Gaz and Zrorx looked at him queerly, but not before the Xyrian gave him a long induced growl from deep within his throat. Dib looked at the creature, slight fear at knowing that the powerful creature before him was in fact royalty of sorts and that he could instantly shred poor Dib to slashes if provoked.
"It's no laughing matter, boy," the Xyrian curtly stated. "If Zim succeeds, all is lost. He will become unstopable. For years our people have had peaceful relations with all the universal peoples. We were enlightened, much like the people of Earth were during the Renaissance. But all that changed when the galaxy alliances learned of an impending threat. That threat, young master..." he looked at Dib calmly as he said this. "... is the Irken Empire. They were bred to conquer and destroy. They know not of anything but that. Oh sure some have feelings, but they are the ones that don't last long. No... they are only bred to exploit and kill. One of your earthling cohorts has some very interesting theories on the Irken race and its comings and goings."
"Such as?" Dib interrogated the Xyrian, waving his hand in minute circles in a guesture for more information. The Xyrian just smiled weakly and shook his head in a typical 'no' fashion.
"The time has not come for me to tell you such things, but in time... I will take you to see her. She's a contemporary genius and admired by many races of people. The Xyrian smiled again, this time more wildly than previously. Dib's lower left eyelid twitched at the sight of the grin. "This woman is infamous and the Irken people as well as the Planet Jackers want her taken out of the picture. Her friend's quite interesting too. A genius and an assassin living in the same residence. Who'd of thought?"
Dib winced slightly at the creature's remark. "Anything else we ought to know before we visit?"
"Does she have a gaming system?" Gaz interjected, slightly excited at the thought of a female assassin, excited at the thought of finally having a girl around that was so similar to her. Someone she could easily get along with. Perhaps she's an artist too, Gaz thought.
"Heh..." The Xyrian mussed Gaz's wild purple hair with one of his massive paws and grinned down at her. "No, but I think you and those two will hit it off really well."
"Well then," Gaz started, grabbing her brother's wrist and jerking him onto his feet. "let's go!"
"Very well," the Xyrian started off in the direction in which the full moon would soon be rising with two shadowy human like figures following close behind.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Down in the bowels of the house where Dib had so often broke into during his childhood, resided Gir. He sat on the overstuffed couch and giggled at the Scary Monkey Show. The monkey was doing random things, much like Gir would himself, the majority of the time, except that the monkey on screen always growled when he did something. Gir apparently finding it rather amusing, just sat there and giggled, the remnants of a Cherry Doom brainfreezy plastered to his doggy mouth.
Further down than Gir resided a meglomaniac hidden genius, mostly blinded by his own need and desire to conquer all that opposed him. This, he thought to himself, wasn't for Irk anymore... it was for himself. His ambition had become more than ambition, it had become a disease from which he could no longer escape. So now, he sat in the comforts of his underground lab, the one thing that had never changed in the many years he had been on earth. The one place he had decided not to relocate. He liked its titanium and Irkinium supported look. The test tubes with their array of varying shades of different colors; the sterilized smell of a well cared for laboratory; the way he could see his reflection in almost all of the spotless and near flawless machinery and tubes. But now, even though all these things comforted him the way a loving parent comforts an injured child, he sighed, knowing there was hard work ahead. Not that he minded it in the least, he found his laboratory work the most enjoyable thing in the world. The one thing he liked more than being the conquerer of this god forsaken pot hole in the universe they all called Earth. Zim sat upright in his chair and grinned maliciously.
Yes.... he thought to himself. There was plenty of hard and valuable work to be done now that Dib and Zrorx were on the run. No one plots against the mighty Zim without my knowing it... he cackled maniacally at the thought.
"Poor pathetic Dib," Zim whispered to no one but his mind. "No one will help you but that stupid Zrorx. I will conquer you yet. And when I do... " he smiled as he picked up a rather small contraption concieved entirely of Zryonium and titanium alloy. " I will be sure that your fate is worse than any death a concentration camp cell could provide you. Your little 'friend's' fate will be nothing compared to your own..." he trailed off as a cackle of hideously evil proportions rose from his throat and encompassed the vast space of his underground lab. Up above, still sitting on the overstuffed couch, Gir laughed at the monkey's antics on the television screen, his laughter of joy and overall happiness rivaling that of the maniacal cackles coming from deep within the depths of the small, oddly colored house.