A/n: Yeah, so it's been forever and a day since I updated this story. Things got complicated with moving halfway across town, school, work, etc. I feel bad, but I know where I want to end up with this, so I figured I would work on it again...

I would still like to know how to do italics...sniff

Disclaimer: I don't own nothing. Not even knowledge of proper grammar.

PART THREE

My mother's funeral was largely unattended. It was basically just myself and Gaz at the grave, along with the priest. Dad had locked himself in his lab to find the cure for chronic depression. I felt that it should have been raining, but instead the sun was shining full blast and it felt like it was over a hundred degrees outside. I was sweating bullets in my black wool suit jacket, and even the priest looked like he would rather be back at the rectory in some air conditioning, though if Gaz was uncomfortable in her knee length black dress, she hid it well enough. She just stood at my side, staring at the mahogany box that held our mother as it was lowered into the ground, the only outward sign of emotion being the way her small hands gripped the daisies she was holding so tightly that the stems bent under the pressure. Daisies had been our mother's favorite flower, and Gaz had insisted that we picked some on the way to the cemetery to lay on the grave. This instance had been the first words that Gaz had spoken to me since she fell asleep in my arms from emotional exhaustion on the bathroom floor when we found our mother. The next few days leading up to the funeral she walked around in a daze, not responding to any outside stimuli at all until I places my GameSlave into her small hands. She had been bugging me to let her play it since Christmas when I had received it as my one "big" present for the year. (She had gotten a Teddy Ruxpin doll, like she had been begging for since September, but had the instinctual younger sibling impression that anything that was mine was more interesting than anything that was hers, I guess, and Teddy's stories had been listened to once and then ignored.) When I had handed her the small handheld consol, I had loaded into it Tetris, my only game besides Vampire Piggy Hunter, thinking that she had dealt with enough death, lately, but when I returned from the store after picking up some much needed essentials like toilet paper and Count Chocofang Cereal, I discovered that she had gone through my room to find Vampire Piggy and she had already beaten my high score. I let her be, realizing that she needed to take her anger and grief out on something, and I would rather it be virtual piggies than me.

The priest concluded his eulogy and made the motion for the coffin to be lowered. As I watched the box make its decent, I had an urge to jump in after it, Lifetime Movie style. I refrained and placed my hand on Gaz's shoulder instead. She shrugged it off, muttering "Don't touch me," under her breath. I felt my heart break a little more and my eyes burned with fresh tears. Didn't she know that we had to stick together? That we were all that was left of our family? Sure, Dad was alive, but...I sighed as I watched her walk to the edge of the hole and drop her flowers in. Her shoulders began to shake ever so slightly as she tried to hold back sobs. The wind picked up right then, blowing her violet hair out of the ribbon she had pulled it back with. I could never be sure, but I could have sworn I heard my sister whisper the words "I hate you," right before she turned around and headed towards the gate of the cemetery. I watched her retreating figure for a few seconds, praying that what I heard has just been a trick of the wind before dropping my own handful of flowers on top of hers. I opened my mouth to say something, but shut it quickly realizing that I was about to echo my sister's sentiments.

"Sir? Sir? Dib. Wake up. This is important." Kala's voice broke through my dreams. I opened one groggy eye and stared at her half blurred shape. I had fallen asleep at my desk, again. On my glasses. Great. It would take me forever to straighten them, again.

"What is it, Kala?" I muttered, closing my eyes, again. I didn't want to think about the battle right now, all I wanted was to go back to sleep for five more...

"It's Gir, Dib. There's evidence that he's been tampered with."

I jerked my head up from the desk so fast I heard my neck pop, "What? Tampered with? How?"

"Gretchen noticed it when she was uploading the data he recorded from the reconnaissance mission you sent him on. It was just a small glitch in his mainframe, so she didn't think much of it then. A few hours ago she went back through it and realized that it was a file that had been impeded into his processor. It...it's a message, Sir."

"A message." I felt my hands curl into fists on their own accord, "A message from who?" I asked, knowing the answer already.

"Zim."

A/n: I guess that's all for now. Thank you everyone who has reviewed this so far. Sorry again to keep everyone waiting. R and R, please. :)