By animeninjaNIPPON

As the light from behind grew dimmer, Zim put on his infrared goggles. He and Dib traveled on without a word. Gir was so far ahead that they had no idea where he was. That made Dib wonder enough to break the silence:

"Are we going the right way?"

Zim stopped and turned slightly. He couldn't see Dib's complete figure, just a few neon colors representing him. "I KNOW where we're GOING!"

"OK, just making sure…"

"Do YOU know what we're going to do once we FIND Tak's ship?" Zim continued.

"Well…not exactly…" Dib bit his lower lip and looked away, a motion unnoticed by Zim's infrared vision. "I'm sure I can figure it out – "

"NO MORE OF YOUR STUPID NOTEBOOK!" Zim screeched. Dib put his hands over his ears and fell forward from the lack of support. The kid looked almost Irken through the goggles, Zim noted, and it somehow made the alien more comfortable to speak to Dib that way. "We'll figure it out MY WAY!"

"If everything's got to be 'your way,' what did you need me for?" Dib shot back.

"I already TOLD you!"

"You told me a lot of things!"

"Well I FORGOT!"

"Just admit it," Dib argued. "You can't do this alone."

"I'm not ALONE! I have my SIR unit to help me! And not just ANY SIR – I have GIR, an ADVANCED unit!"

"Who is probably in China, or some homicidal maniac's chamber," Dib added sarcastically. "And based on how reliable everything else of yours is, so are we."

"I KNOW where we're going!" Zim repeated. "YOU are lucky I even SPARED your worthless life! You should be THANKING me!"

"Maybe if I can change the past back to the way it was before," Dib whispered, half-contemptuously, to himself, "my life won't be worthless anymore."

"EXACTLY!" Zim announced, raising a fist and smacking it into the ground above. "That is wh – WHAT?"

"What do you mean, 'what'?" Dib had no idea what Zim was talking about, but then again, he wasn't really sure what he himself had said. He pondered it for a moment, but came up empty. "You want to go back in time to give me a better life?"

"NO! To give ZIM a better life!"

"Oh." An awkward pause followed. "…So, I guess we kinda live the same way."

"WRONG!" Zim shouted. "I have suffered HORRIBLE dilemmas that YOUR brainmeats cannot BEGIN to imagine!"

"My life hasn't been so great, either!" Dib responded. "Before you captured me, I'd just found out that I'm not really who I thought I was. I'm actually a failed experiment of the famous Professor Membrane… Unit 42, I think he said. Anyway, that's not how humans are supposed to come into being!"

"Well, IRKENS are born in labs, too, so consider yourself honored to have had an Irken birth!"

"That doesn't make me feel better at all!" It did, however, make him feel as though he understood Zim a little more.

"I don't CARE!" Zim crawled further down the tunnel. Dib followed the scuffling sound, but he couldn't keep up with the Irken as much as before. How long had it been since he slept? Plus, all that wandering around in the darkness wasn't very energizing…

"We shouldn't be fighting…" Dib's voice was growing wispy. "We have to work together to stop Tak…"

Zim groaned. "Fine. It doesn't matter – if we SUCCEED in going back in time, NONE of this would have happened ANYWAY!" He turned around. "OK, Dib-monkey – "

Dib wasn't moving.

"…Dib-monkey?"

End of part thirteen