By animeninjaNIPPON

Just then, Gir walked into the room. "Master, I didn't do it!"

Dib looked up, blushing. "Doesn't anyone ask before coming into my room?"

Zim rolled off the bed, somewhat dizzy. "Whaaat…"

"I didn't blow up the microwave! It was the piggy!" Gir continued.

"W-WHAAT!" Zim was suddenly knocked out of his trance. "What happened, Gir?"

"The fire is so pretty…"

"AAAAAAAH!" Zim jumped through Dib's still-broken window screaming. Gir gave a little wave to Dib before following his master.

His enemy was finally gone! Dib took advantage of this opportunity to see the contents of Zim's data disk. He popped the disk into his laptop, but before he could see anything, his computer completely froze, displaying a bunch of purple-and-black pixels.

"Foreign media! I should have known!"

Back at Zim's base, Zim and Gir (mostly Zim) managed to put out the fire before any serious damage was done. However, it would take all day to fix everything that had been destroyed.

By that afternoon, Zim repaired everything that needed it, but he had wasted many hours in doing so – hours he could have spent figuring out how to set his plans in motion (or at least getting the disk back). He jadedly sat on the couch next to Gir, who was channel surfing. Gir landed on one channel featuring a man and woman in a dimly lit room having a serious exchange of dialogue.

"Someone ought to – kiss you, Laura!" the man on TV said.

This caught Zim's attention. He leaned in close to the TV as the man leaned over to the woman's face as she closed her eyes. Then Gir changed the channel.

"GAAH!" Zim looked over at his happy-go-lucky SIR. "Gir, change it back! That might be a battle strategy I need to learn!"

"We now return to 'Mysterious Mysteries'," boomed a voice on TV.

Zim's attention was held again.

Meanwhile, Dib was watching the same thing at his house while trying to fix his frozen laptop during commercials. Gaz sat opposite him on the couch, playing her GS2.

"Stop doing that," she demanded. "I'm trying to concentrate."

Dib sighed. He was almost sure he'd had more fun watching TV with Zim.

End of part ten

I added an allusion to Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" in there. Also, sorry if this chapter was boring. The story'll be in full swing by ch.12.

BTW, anon. reviews are now accepted. So review, all ye ZADR fans!

animeninjaNIPPON