Chapter Twenty-One: The Leaving of a Stranger

Mel sat at the table in Zim's kitchen, staring at the objects retrieved from Dib before his body was burned. Zim, walking in, noticed what she was doing.

"Human, why do you mourn this way?"

"I'm trying to detach myself from my attachment to his living as a being on our physical plane of existence."

"Eh?"

"I am trying to make myself remember that it does not matter whether he is alive in the sense that we are--talking, walking, breathing--and that what does matter is that he's alive in memory."

"Why did you kill him, then? If you mourn him so much, why did you kill him? We could've gotten him out of there."

"I had to prove something to him and to myself: I had to prove that I can overcome my primitive ways of thinking that the deceased are truly dead. He's alive in another form. I had to prove that I could overcome that and know he's okay. He's better off than before. I had to do it."

"Then why do you mourn him?"

"I don't really mourn him in that sense...I just miss being able to interact with him. You know, talking, laughing..."

"...Arguing..."

"Alas, arguing, too. I want you to remember something, and remember it always. I'll have to go back to my own reality soon, but I'll write a book in his honor, and yours as well. Zim, the prophecy they spoke of is not for Dib to fulfill. Not in this universe. It is your place to end the warring with the words of wisdom I speak and write. I give to you in my leave a book of all that I've learned regarding philosophy, fact, and the workings of minds. You will publish it as your own, and refer to it for the answers you need. These battles have ended in my friend's death, but my perception has been strengthened by it. You will carry out our duty, for we will both be unable to stop the insanity. It is up to you, Zim, and as my friend, I trust you."

"Thank you."

"I find you deserving of this trust, and it is through you that I must go back to my own reality and meet my family again. I don't think they'd believe my story as any more than another work of fiction branching from my mind, but all the same, I'll know that this has happened. I hope to leave on a happy note, so I must stop grieving over Dib's demise."

"Mel, you are the Kiana they described. You and the Dib have changed fate--do you realize what this means?"

"What?"

"You've changed the unchangeable. You've fixed the unfixable. You've altered the unalterable."

"Zim...in doing so, you've lost me by my title of Kiana, and lost me by my title of Kivoc. You are the Kivoc, the one sent to destroy your own world but you cannot bring yourself to do it, the one who cannot kill even your worst enemies after finding out the truth of the matter."

"I may be the Kivoc," Zim said, "but I am not the Kiana. You're title is Kiana, and only you have this title. It is yours, and one day you will return and fulfill this promise."

"Thank you. I must be on my way now, though."

"Mel, tell me something. What was Dib's last request?"

"For me to kill him. I told him to remember that the Earth tears are his to keep eternally, and he said, 'I will remember that.'"

"And then you returned him to the Earth from which he came."

"Exactly."

"I still have his ashes. You may take them with you to remember him by."

"No. I don't need it."

"Take it." Zim handed her an urn, and she thought of her friend. She had not thought she could kill anyone before, and yet she killed her best friend.

"No," she said. "I cannot still have this material attachment to him. This is not what remains of Dib. This is what remains of the body he was trapped in." With these words, she dropped the urn, and it shattered into a million pieces, dirtying the floor about them.

"Mel...why did you do that?"

"It's not my place to say. I must leave, now."

"But Mel, I..." She disappeared, as though an apparition, and Zim wondered at it. "You...really were dead." However, he was wrong in thinking this, for she was not dead. She was very much real, and very much alive.

Back in her own reality, Mel found herself just waking up from slumber in her bed.

"Mel! Wake up!" her dad called.

"Zim? Is that you?"

"I think you've reached a whole new realm of fanaticism if you think your own father is Zim."

"What...? Where am I?"

"Here in your room. Did you go sleepwalking on the moon or something?"

"I...This can't...but Dib...Fali..."
"Your alarms went off, but you didn't wake up. Do you know what's on right now?"

"What?"

"Invader Zim. Come on, you're missing it." She dropped her jaw, disbelieving what was happening. Supposing that it really was just a dream, she pulled the covers off and screamed.

Looking down, she saw that her clothes were tattered and bloody, and she was covered in the ashes of her dead friend. Still wearing Dib's coat, her shaking hand reached in her pocket and removed the contents. The knife, the knife that killed, lay in her hands as well as the photograph from the skool dance. It was real. All of it. She vowed to one day return and right the wrongs she had done to that universe. She swore to avenge Dib and punish the tri-species system--the Falish, Seraul, and Irkens--for the pain they caused and the illusions they perpetrated.

Sometimes life plays tricks on you; it clouds your perception. Just when you think you've got answers, you turn around and find that the picture's upside down and everything's jumbled. Nothing can truly be determined as being fact, and perspectives, beliefs, and even what we consider as undeniable truths become illusions. Everything gets vague, and from my experience in trying to live through life, for all I know, my entire life has just been one cleverly projected illusion, and that nothing may exist as I know it at all. This is just a simple fact. Nothing, no matter how you put it, will ever be certain for me again.

Life is an uncertainty in and of itself.

--Invader Mel's Diary of Perception.