"As you may have already guessed, this is a trap. You're really one of the only people who can appreciate the amazingness of this plan, so I'll let you in on what it is. Actually, I'll let you see." - Zim

There's not much time left before they get here. But he'll help me. I know he will. We've done this before, together. I need…

He'll have to help me.

On Monday, Dib and Gaz walked to skool together, like they always did.

Gaz, Dib reflected, had always been astonishingly willing to tag along silently next to him, despite her adamant hatred of him and nearly everything else in the universe. For a time, he'd even comforted himself with the thought that perhaps he was somehow less loathsome to her than most people; if he couldn't share a brotherly connection to her, he could at least think of himself as a more tolerable backdrop than her alternatives.

Over the past two years, however, with certain...distractions absent, Dib had made the mistake of attempting to pay more attention to her. There had been occasional forced conversations, some hopeful smiles and recollections of shared family memories (unpleasant as they were), and questions about her new video games.

These were still met more often than not with a low growl. If Dib was lucky, he might receive an icy silence that he could try to interpret as a mildly positive sign. He imagined at such times that perhaps, finally, she was warming up to him.

When he was little, Dib used to pretend he was a famed paranormalist super genius President with psychic powers and super strength. That illusion hadn't lasted very long, either.

When Dib left Gaz to go to his first class, she stopped squinting long enough to betray bloodshot eyes. Her Gameslave had apparently lost some of its appeal over the past year, because Gaz, always attuned to gamer geek trends, now spent most of her free time playing online. This would seem to require an unacceptable level of actual human interaction with the other players on her teams who text-messaged each other, but from what Dib had seen over her shoulder (before being backhanded halfway across the room), she managed to curtail this by speaking strictly about strategy in the most cold, technical terms possible, and then only when absolutely necessary.

The equally-obsessive kids somewhere on the other side of the screen probably only tolerated this because Gaz, frankly, was the best. When someone was on her team, nothing could stop them. Until Gaz inevitably annihilated them to gain a level or two, anyway.

"Another long night playing World of War-torn Medieval Bloody Deathbeasts, Gaz?" he asked, eyebrows raised.

"Another long night at 'marching band practice' on Friday, Dib?" she answered, not looking up from her strategy book.

Dib glanced around at the other students, trying to steady his voice. "Yes. We have a big game this weekend, you know."

"Hmm. Gee, it's funny how I never see you at pep rallies."

Dib smiled nervously, and spoke to her through gritted teeth. "I'm in the percussion section. We stand towards the back of the group."

She snorted. "What are you, the bass drum? Your head is huge and empty enough." She flipped casually through the pages. He glared down at her.

"Gaz. You won't tell Dad..." His sister raised a hand towards his face.

"Dib. Don't insult me. Look, we won't have any problems if you'll just remember two things. One, I know what you've been up to. And two, I don't care."

Gaz walked away without looking at him once.

Two years ago, when Dib had escaped with the Pak to his father's lab, Gaz had shown up, chasing him, with Zim in tow. After dismissing the silly idea that she'd meant to save him by knocking the Pak off, Dib briefly wondered if perhaps she'd actually taken pity on Zim, and attempted to save him. Rather than the sting of betrayal he might have expected, Dib found himself feeling curiously warm towards her over this possibility.

The notion quickly disappeared when he found Gaz's Gameslave in Zim's pocket, and figured out what had happened.

Gaz never asked Dib about the game. Perhaps she'd eventually realized that Zim had tricked her. In fact, by this point, she must have seen the game sitting in plain sight on the desk in Dib's room. But she'd never mentioned it, never taken it. She just bought a new one.

Dib thought he'd noticed her staring at it once, after she'd ordered him to join her and their father for Bloaty's Pizza Night.

It might have been his imagination.

6. You run an orphanage and have had a hard time making ends meet. A car dealership offers you a new van worth 15,000 for free if you will falsely report to the government that the dealership donated a van worth 30,000. You really need the van and it will give you an opportunity to make the children happy. Do you agree to take the van?

In the class period before lunch, Dib's group was supposed to be discussing ethical dilemmas, but the conversation had quickly drifted, as it always did, towards the upcoming football game, lifting and punching things, and the top ten hottest girls in class. Dib skulked off to one side, his desk shifted slightly away from the rest of the group, the only one actually doing the work. As always.

Dib wasn't quite the social pariah he'd been back when he spent every day screaming about aliens. Nor did he currently have the notoriety and dubious fame of being one of the class "freaks." Now, he was merely…invisible. It was times like this that he wondered if he'd ever be able to fake interest in the other students' trivial concerns enough to become anything else. Times like this when he wondered if he wanted to.

He'd once thought that getting grouped with mostly girls would be more tolerable, but discussions about hair care and zits weren't much better.

Mrs. Elliot stood in front of the room, as chipper and steadfastly optimistic in teaching style as her husband. She tried to explain, in cheerful terms, the choices that Raskolnikov had made in "Crime and Punishment," suggesting that Dostoevsky's examinations of morality might be helpful. But "Ethics 250" was probably not an appropriate class for middle-skoolers. At least, not these middle-skoolers.

"Yeah, Jessica's really...a girl, I think," Torque admitted. "What about that Zita? Man, has she got hair."

"Maybe she's got hair, but Zita's definitely lame," Chunk grunted. "I've heard she can write. I think I saw her holding a book once, too." His eyes traveled across the room. "Hey, look at her, over there! With a paper and pencil. And a book. I'll bet she's writing, and using the book somehow."

"Aw, well. She's still got hair," Torque concluded.

Dib glanced surreptiously over at Zita. He hadn't spoken to her all day, but she seemed to be suffering no ill effects from the past weekend's events. Even her neck wound was gone.

Fortunately, Zim's base had equipment that had been specifically used before to heal and hide injuries sustained by humans. Dib knew why, as he had freed all of Zim's tormented test subjects from the base when he first took control of it. Seeing the horrible state of his fellow humans, one of whom had some sort of gigantic probe inserted directly into his brain (and was perhaps irreparably insane as a result), had given Dib several months' worth of nightmares and caused him to consider destroying the Pak immediately.

Partially due to the fact that he'd been sitting on his own bed, surrounded by his own crude drawings of ghosts, sasquatches, aliens, and various other creatures undergoing horrible experiments as he pondered this course of action, Dib had decided against it.

Zita, amazingly, looked like she had serious thoughts of her own plaguing her. She was focused intently on the book in front of her, and scribbling something down.

Dib had a brief, dreamy vision of those eyes turned towards him, accusing. I know what you did...

Maybe it would delay things. Maybe it would make things more complicated.

But he couldn't use Zita again.

After class, he wandered over towards her.

"Hey, Zita," he began quietly. "Don't forget, I promised to do your homework for you today. Just to...help you make a dent in your Quantum Physics…stuff."

Zita looked up. For a second, Dib's heart froze in his chest. But she just grinned, broadly. "Oh, that's okay, Dib. Thanks and all, but I already finished it. I've been working ahead in the book. I guess your freaky tutoring really paid off, huh? Maybe you're good for something, after all." She laughed, holding up the paper she'd been working on. "It's really making sense now, ya'know?"

Dib shook his head, and glanced down at her work. "Is that a Hamilton-Jacobi equation?"

She nodded. He blinked. "But...but I didn't do that! To you! I mean..."

"Oh, don't be so modest." Zita leaned in towards him. "Actually, I wouldn't mind coming over to your house again on Wednesday. I've got to keep up, ya'know? So we'll do it," she concluded, not concerned with a securing a confirmation from him. She gathered her books together, and stood up.

"Sorry, Dib, I've got to run. I'll see you Wednesday. Well," she backed towards the door, glancing around nervously, "I don't want the other wormbabies to see us talking."

Dib watched her go. He closed his eyes, but opened them when he saw a face that was Zita's, but not Zita's.

And then stood there, silently, for about ten minutes after class had ended, staring at the blackboard.

On it, Mrs. Elliot had written down an ethical dilemma she had often considered herself.

Her two children, her only children, trapped in a car. The car was burning, but she only had time to save one of them. One would live, and one would die.

Who would she choose? The older one, because he had a more developed personality, and clearly defined ambitions? The younger one, because she hadn't had the chance to live as long? The one likely to have the most fulfilling life? How could you determine that; who was she to determine that?

And was intellect the only way to decide? Was it ever right to go with your heart?

Dad would pick Gaz.

In the end, though, Dib really shouldn't have felt badly, knowing that. After all, the parent had nothing against the unchosen child. There was no wish to cause them harm. What it came down to, really, was a matter of sacrifice. But it wasn't an impersonal and cold matter, either.

There was somebody else who meant more. Somebody else who, for whatever reason, was more important.

Dib started, mentally, to plan for Wednesday.

From this point on, there was no turning back.

He and Gaz exchanged no words as they walked home from skool that day. She drifted behind him, always, staying near him for the same reason that a person in a theater might sit next to a stranger.

To avoid the vulnerability of being alone.

Author's Notes: I wanted to avoid having any more author's notes, to tell you the truth. So much for that. I'll try to keep them few and far between.

First of all, it's probably blatantly obvious by now, but this deviates from canon at the end of "Ten Minutes to Doom." Some readers might not know the story, so I thought I'd relate it here. When "Invader Zim" was cancelled, the staff, who by that point were having a...um, a less-then-pleasant experience working on the show (and, in some cases, apparently weren't entirely sad to see it end), wanted to change the ending of the TMtD script so that Zim didn't put the Pak back on in time and died, and to be allowed to make it as a finale. It would've provided some closure to the series. This story basically came from my wondering, "I wonder what fanfiction for the series would be like if THAT had happened?" And, for better or for worse, this is the result. I need to stop all that thinkin'.

Actually, my original plan was to have an AU where Dib didn't take the Pak off in time, which would have been a cooler/creepier ending. But, well...you'll just have to see.

Incidentally, I'm not one of those people who wishes that they had been, "allowed to end the series this way." Don't get me started on slapped-together endings, or killing off major characters in a comedy cartoon show. Nobody wants to hear my Maude Flanders rant again.

Meh, okay, this section got cut out the first time in quick edit, so I would like to give a special thanks to all of my reviewers, for this or my other stories. I appreciate every single review VERY MUCH. You have no idea. Actually, the reviews are probably one of the reasons I'm still writing this. Not the only reason, but they mean a lot to me. Thank you so much. Once I actually get my profile up, I'd love to thank everyone by name, if no one minds.

I'm really sorry that chapters for this have taken so long to come out. Unfortunately, real life keeps me very, very busy, and a lot of other things (school, hobbies, actually having a social life, the usual) come first. The tacit agreement between fanfiction writers and readers, I guess. 'Tis our lot. Or something. My apologies.

I'm also sorry because this chapter is much, much shorter than it was originally supposed to be. It got split into two parts thanks to theme/length. So this is unfortunately just set-up/filler. The next chapter will be longer, and yes, I actually promise to answer all of the questions that you might have in that one. Really. Honest. Put down those pitchforks! Please. I have toilet children...

There will be some creepiness/violence in future chapters...sheesh, I don't know if that's a warning, or an advertisement. Thanks again to everyone for reading.