Part Four

No, I don't own Invader Zim. Please forgive any messed up..ness.in this chapter. I'm weeping fever tears as I write, and can't quite focus on the screen. Yes, pity me.

"Please don't contact the Tallest, Zim, I'm asking you now as a fellow Irkan," Kith pleaded. Zim averted his head, forcing himself not to look into her beguiling violet eyes.

"All the more reason. Gir! Open the tunnels between the labs." A hidden door in the wall slid open, revealing a passageway to Zim's base.

Once they were in the scarlet glow of Zim's master computer, Zim turned to Kith. "I'm sorry to do this," he said, ruby eyes filled with pain, "But...Gir, do not let Kith move from that spot."

Gir's trim turned red, and he came to stand in front of the trembling Invader.

"Computer! Open a transmission to the Tallest."

The screen flickered on to Purple and Red in their throne-chamber. They were standing next to a table stacked high with papers and maps.

Zim saluted. "My Tallest!"

Red glanced over at the screen. "Zim, we're a little busy right now, I seem to have lost my....sister.....Kith!" The last part was directed at Kith, standing behind Zim. Purple glanced up sharply, and his eyes flicked back from Red to Kith and back to Red. He looked at Kith and rubbed his eyes.

Red was standing inches away form the screen. "Zim! How on Irk did you find her?! She ran away nearly seven months ago!" To Kith, he declared, "When you get back to the Massive, ooo, after your welcoming banquet you're going to spend some time in your quarters! You had me so worried, I--I couldn't even eat my curly fries!"

Zim stood slack-jawed and stared at Kith, who stood quietly, trying in vain not to see her brother on the screen.

Finally Zim worked up the air to speak. "You--you're the--the Almighty Red's--sister?" Betrayal and anger shone on his face. "Why did you end up here?! Why...why...." he couldn't finish.

Suddenly, the intruder klaxon sounded in the upper levels of Zim's base. A second later, Dib slid out of the elevator tube, brandishing a sheaf of papers.

"Kith!" he yelled frantically. "I figured it out!! I know how you can get tall again and see the purple guy again...oh...am I interrupting something?" he finished lamely, quailing under the intense scrutiny of four Irkans and a SIR. "Um, Kith? Why are you doing that?"

Kith was drawing her finger across her throat, frantically trying to get him to shut up. Purple walked up to the screen. For a moment he just peered at Kith, mulling over some thought.

"Hey, Red?" he asked. "What color are your sister's eye's?"

"I dunno, same as yours, I think. Look at me, Kith."

She slowly raised her gaze off the floor and eyed her brother's confused face.

"Yeah," he told Purple. "They are exactly the same color as your eyes, Pur! How weird is that...."

Purple was regarding Kith with an unidentifiable expression.

"That color is so familiar...."

"Well, duh! You see it in the mirror all the time!"

"No... I saw it on someone else, some one I met on the Massive.... You remember Kas, don't you?" he asked his co-Tallest. "She ran away on me at dinner!"

"Hehehe...that was pretty funny....hey, Zim, where's Kith?" Red frantically peered through the screen, but he couldn't see his little sister.

Zim frantically glanced around his base. "She seems to have disappeared, my Tallest."

"Ooo...she gets these bad habit watching you sneak out to parties, ya know," Red said to Purple, somewhat jokingly. He turned back to the screen, and the fiery eyes focused on Dib. "I am going to appoint you...what's your name?...oh well...big-headed boy, to the task of locating my sister and keeping her safe until the Massive arrives to pick her up."

Dib nodded mutely.

Zim gaped at Dib, and then whined at the Tallest, "But he's the stoopid human stink-beast I always told you about! You can trust me!"

Red cocked his head at Zim and eyed him suspiciously. "Actually, we really wouldn't trust you to carry our bags of chips. But--" he said hastily, with an elbow form Purple, "Be sure to keep up the good work conquering Earth! Remember--when the Armada arrives in six months to retrieve Kith, I want her safe and healthy."

With that he shut off the transmission. Silence filled the base.

Zim slowly turned to Dib. Dib shrugged and grinned weakly. "I guess you have to wait on that whole 'conquering-the-Earth' thing for a while, huh?" he said sheepishly.

Zim collapsed in his chair.

"She's the Almighty Tallest's sister...and I was going to report her for execution...."

"It seems she's more than just Red's sister," Dib said, coming to stand by Zim. "Has she told you?"

Zim looked sharply at his nemesis. "Told me what?"

"That she can change her physical form and become anything else, that she accidentally ran into the Tallest Purple while she was changed into a taller...person, that he took her out to dinner, that she ditched him halfway through said dinner...any of that ring a bell?"

Zim slammed his fists on the computer's keyboard. "I cannot believe she kept such secrets...What? Are you still here?" he growled, glaring at Dib.

"Well, yeah. I figure that you could at lest explain some things to me if I'm going to be Kith's bodyguard. First off, why is it such a bad thing that the purple guy likes her?"

Zim sharply twisted in his seat. "Tallest Purple--he likes Kith? How so?"

Dib shrugged. "Well, the way she put it, he ran into her after a night of clubbing, and decided to take her out to dinner."

"But she's shorter than I am! And she's Tallest Red's sister!"

"That brings up another thing," interrupted Dib. "Wouldn't his TALL genes do something to affect her SHORT genes?"

"And how long have you been thinking on this one, O Big Headed Thinking Boy?"

Dib scowled and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his coat. "I can find out anyway, Zim. You don't seem to realize that I am more valued by the Tallest than you, and therefore higher in rank. YOU don't HAVE to tell.."

Zim obviously felt that one. He waved one hand dismissively. "Same genes. To put it a way you could understand, they are twins. Except something happed to Kith in her smeet tube. Almost what you would call a 'miscarriage.'"

Dib squinted as he wrestled with a particularly chewy thought. For a moment he was silent, and Zim began to grow suspicious.

Finally, Dib broke the silence.

"Well, first things first--we've got to find Kith."

Zim sighed and resumed smashing his head on the arm of his chair. The humiliation of allowing a human piece of filth into his lab was quite acute; the fact that said human was currently making sandwiches in the kitchen was nearly as bad.

"Zim! Do you want mustard on your sandwich?" he yelled down the P.A. system.

The bruised Irkan raised his head and glowered at the speaker. "I want none of your human filth, Dib!" he yelled frustratedly. "You would sooner poison me than give me decent food!"

"No mustard; check."

Zim growled softly to himself and continued typing in scans for Kith. "How in the world could she manage to get out of scanner range in less than an hour?! These are designed to go for thousands of miles!"

"Didja say something to me, Zim?" asked Dib, stepping out of the elevator tube. He handed a sandwich to Gir and set one down on the console besides his temporary ally.

"No, Dib, because then I would be being nice to you, and you are not worthy of the favor of Zim."

Dib rolled his eyes and sat on a stool near the desk. "Look, I said I was sorry about that whole dissection thing. I, um...I had a talk with Kith, and she said that I was being kind of hard on you--and I thought that since, at least for a while, we're working together, we could call it a truce."

Zim's head stopped in mid-smash, and his fingers hovered shakily over the keyboard. Slowly he turned around to face Dib, until he was eye-to-eye with the boy. "You want me to shake your hand--and promise not to destroy you?"

"At least for a while, yes."

Zim glared disdainfully at Dib's outstretched hand. Slowly he reached his own glove fist toward it--and grasped it in a firm handshake. Surprised, Dib raised his head, only to find he was staring straight into Zim's faceted ruby eyes.

"I'm doing this for Kith, you know," Zim said. "Not for you, not for my Tallest--for Kith." Dib thought he saw a glimmer of--something, he wasn't sure--in Zim's eye, but he dismissed it.

"So am I, I'll have you know," Dib retorted loftily.

Zim seized the advantage as soon as he sensed it. "You don't feel for her, do you?" he cried gleefully. "That is very amusing to the mighty Zim! As if she would ever choose you for her love-pig! The very thought of a powerful Irkan like Kith ever pondering such a thing--is ludicrous!" He fell to the floor, laughing hysterically.

Dib said nothing, but stood with his jaw and fists clenched. His first reaction was anger and embarrassment for the accusation, but a moment later he realized that Zim had hit upon the truth. He had been denying it, lying to himself --I knew she was an alien, he thought, and I know she would never return the feeling. Still, a revelation like that didn't make the wounds hurt any less.

Suddenly Dib's humiliation disappeared into a tidal wave of fury. He seized the collar of Zim's uniform and hoisted him against the nearest wall, preventing the surprised Irkan from calling to his computer.

"You think just being an Irkan makes you so much better than the average human; well I'll tell you something--Kith even said that you were nothing but a laughingstock on the Massive." At Zim's doubtful expression, Dib nodded in grim confirmation. "Yep. You were sent on this 'mission' to get you out of the way for the real Invaders."

Zim shook his head and pushed Dib away. "You filthy, stinking human, you LIE! Computer, get the Dib out of my base now." Strong cables erupted out of the ceiling and latched onto Dib. He didn't resist the forceful handling, although they used much more force than was necessary. It really didn't matter though. He had hit on a weakness in Zim--and there were several more he suspected had come perilously close to surfacing.

As soon as the gnomes had dumped him past the perimeter, Dib brushed himself off and started toward Kith's base. If he was going to be her Tallest-regulated bodyguard, he would have to learn a bit more about her.

A moment later he rang the intercom buzzer on Kith's gate post.

A static filled voice could be heard. "What. I'm a little busy."

"Kith? Kith, its Dib. Can I come in?" He held his breath hopefully. After a moments pause, the gate unlatched itself, and Dib stepped through the gate. MiKi met him at the door, out of disguise. "Ooo! I like your coat!! Can I have, please?! It's so soft and... and coaty!!"

Dib nervously wrapped the said coat tighter around his slight frame. "Uh, no... I kinda need it for...stuff." He felt around is his pocket and withdrew a ball of lint. "Here. This is pocket lining!"

MiKi snatched the wad and rubbed it around her face. "Soft!"

Dib carefully stepped past the purring SIR and looked around the base, what he could see. Kith had obviously done a better job of investigating human interior decorating. For one, there was no toilet in the kitchen. Various doors led off to other rooms. He sat down on the soft looking couch and poked at some magazines written in Irkan.

"Do you see why I had to get away?"

Dib started, dropping the magazine. A door across the room opened and Kith stepped out, wearing a trench coat, but not the rest of her disguise. Dib felt his heart flutter; an interesting reaction to feel for a green alien with purple buggy eyes, he noted self-consciously.

As if she sensed his thoughts, Kith turned her head, looked out the window.

"You should wear your disguise if you're going to be walking around the ground floor," Dib reproved her sternly. "Anyone could see you out of disguise."

Kith looked strangely at him and cocked a non-existent eyebrow skeptically. "Wouldn't it fit your plans perfectly if someone did?"

Dib picked up a magazine and flipped the pages nonchalantly. "I plan to take my role as body-guard seriously."

"Body-guard?" Kith's voice became somewhat mocking. "Are we on a crusade now? Protect the Rainforests, Save the Aliens?"

Dib shook his head. "Not really. After you left Zim's base, your...uh, brother told me to make sure that you were safe until the Massive came to pick you up in six months."

"I imagine Zim was pretty put out with that decision," Kith said sarcastically.

"Actually, very much so."

Kith's composure changed drastically. She stood up straight, and her eyes brightened with a mischievous gleam.

"You've just given me the best idea," she said excitedly, yanking on Dib's arm. She pulled him into the linen closet.

Dib's heart was beating madly.

The elevator began to descend into the depths of Kith's base. His pulse slowed down disappointedly.

"I know just how to fix this whole mess once and for all!"