Important Note: This, lovely and constant reader, is a story I volunteered to finish for The-Death-Bringer-of-Hell. She allowed me to and here I am. The rest of the chapters from here on out are MINE! Now, enjoy!

Persona Reversed

Chapter Seven: Code: Infiltration

Had it been only a day? A week? A month or year? Hell, maybe even a millennium?

Rina said otherwise, but in space, far away from your own sun and simply passing by others, time was funny. His watch had stopped forever and a day ago, so that was useless, but Zim seemed to know exactly what time it was. Rina could make a close guess, yet Zim had it down to the very second. It had been three days, five hours, and somewhere around forty minutes. Dib wondered how he knew.

"Are we there yet?"

Dib nearly slammed his head into some of the ships many controls, but restrained himself. That would only serve to give him a concussion. However efficient he was at telling time, Zim's patience couldn't be improved by it. He had been asking that for hours. Every hour, on the hour, he would announce the hour, then that infernal question would follow at five minute intervals. Dib had come severely close to giving himself a concussion many times. And once or twice the idea of throttling the little Irken had flitted through his mind, only to be squashed by something.

"Zim, please do not ask that question again or I will stab you." Rina said calmly enough, though her voice held no room for argument. Zim nodded obediently, scared for his life.

Minutes later, though…

"Are we THERE yet?"

"AAAGGHHHH!" She jumped up from her seat at the steering controls and made a dive for Zim, the ship's autopilot activated. Silver spidery like appendages appeared from her PAK. They held her up, so that she was even taller than before. She followed Zim as he ran around, trying to catch him so she could stab him. "Come back here, Zim!" she yelled angrily. "I need to stab you with something!"

"NEVER!" he returned, running past Dib and almost knocking him down. Zim turned and caught him at the last second. But, when he pulled him back up, they overbalanced, and Dib just ended up falling over onto Zim. They crashed to the floor, a tangle of limbs rolling around. Rina stood over them, watching with interest. The spidery legs disappeared into her PAK.

Faces inches from each others', Dib had a clear view of Zim's eyes. Momentarily they stopped their struggling. Their breathing was a little ragged, and Dib could feel Zim's warm breath on his face, fogging up his glasses. He could see it in his eyes. The thing. The disease. It was starting to devour him. And it was starting with those eyes. Those pink eyes which he knew so well. The ones that always used to look at him with utter loathing and a kind of insanity. Now they were dulling. Not with death, but with that disease that his own leaders had infected him with. His own leaders!

In his musings, Dib didn't notice how the distance between them was so minimal. Zim enlightened the Dib-human non too gently…

"Stink-beast! Remove yourself from ZIM'S almighty FACE!"

Dib winced at the other's voice. They were so close—in each others' faces! Did Zim really have to yell? Besides… "Your on top of me." he pointed out. Something akin to a blush tinted the Irken's face a light blue. The Irken version of it, most likely. He looked almost cute. The thought was in and out of Dib's mind before he could recognize it. The blush faded.

"So, you two going to kiss or what?" The voice was full of contained laughter. That blue blush appeared on Zim's face for a repeat performance, only more pronounced. Dib could feel one staining his own face, too. Not blue but a rosy pink.

Rolling off of Dib, Zim stood and glared daggers at Rina. Dib stood up behind him. She finally allowed a giggle to escape. Followed by a laugh. Then she was on the Voot Runner's pink floor, rolling around and laughing madly, a blue tint on her green face, also. Zim, however, looked furious and in no mood to share a chuckle.

"How dare YOU to even SUGGEST that I, ZIM, Irk's most RESPECTED INVADER, KISS a stupid stink-beast like HIM!" A gloved finger was jabbed rudely in Dib's direction, nearly going up his nose.

A glare was sent back at Zim as she calmed her self and got to her feet. "Damn it, Zim, it was just a joke!" she said. He acknowledged that with a curt nod, and walked over to the other side of the ship to sit down in one of the two spare chairs Rina had set out for them.

Dib looked up at her, asking, "What was that about, Rina?"

With a sigh, she shook her head and sat at the Voot Runner's steering controls. "He's just frustrated."

"About what?" he inquired, staring at Zim, who was watching Gir and Akina. The two units where playing with a basketball that Gir had been carrying around in his head for some unknown reason. Dib was even willing to bet that Gir didn't even know why he had it!

"Well, wouldn't you be frustrated if everything you've known, everything you've believed in, was suddenly being questioned? Put under a bright light for observation?" she asked, looking sadly at Zim. "He's being eaten from the inside out, and he refuses to accept it. He still wants to believe that the Almighty Tallest haven't banished him again. That he really is on a top secret mission."

"Wait," Dib interrupted, sitting on the second spare chair. "Again? Zim's been banished before?" Rina nodded in confirmation. "What happened? Why was he banished?"

Rina told him of Zim's checkered past, being interrupted only once when Zim declared that he had "Made the fires better".

After a while, she finished. Dib just sat there and kind of absorbed it all. No wonder the Tallest had wanted to get rid of him. He had been so much trouble! This abruptly reminded him about Zim's eyes. "The disease has already started to spread." he stated, the words out a second after he had thought it.

"How do you know?" Zim and Rina chorused, looking at him curiously.

"It's in you eyes." He received blank looks and a "Hmm?" from Zim. "Your eyes are kind of dull. That's were the disease is starting."

They sat in silence. No one moved for some time. Not even Zim, who would usually say that he was lying. Even he could not deny this new information.

"We are approaching the Massive." The computer announced. They looked grimly out the windows at the huge, pink ship with the Irken symbol imprinted on its side. Surrounding the Massive was a scattering of other Irkens' Voot Runners.

"So, how are we going to do this?" Zim asked, for once in his life being completely calm.

"We slip in, among their ranks, and take them down. But we'll need disguises." Rina said, standing and turning around so that she faced the computer. "Fortunately, I think I have that covered. Computer!"

"Yes?"

"I need three disguises. Now!" she ordered.

In front of her, the controls slid aside revealing a black hole. From it, three gray mechanical hands extended forth. In each was a… disguise thing. It looked a lot like the thing Tak wore that made her look human. Rina grabbed them and the arms returned to their secret space, controls sliding smoothly into place. They attached the disguises to their heads.

The Voot Runner entered the entourage surrounding the Massive unnoticed. They got right next to it and Rina entered a code into her computer. A hatch appeared on the outside of the Massive and the Voot Runner. A metal tube extended from Rina's small ship to the Tallests' bigger one, latching on so that they were connected. The hatches opened and Rina beckoned to them to follow.

They entered the hatch, walked through the tube, and, finally, entered the Massive, where they activated their disguises…

AN: Hope you guys enjoyed this! I am happy to say that this chapter is MINE! WOO! Please review! I accept flames! I love to bitch at the flamers! Well, bye!