'...evening's cool and quiet. Who would trade that hum of night for sun-' Gaz yawned, and began to search for her phone to turn off the alarm. She glares at the time on the phone. 9 am. She rolls her eyes, and drops the phone on the floor, rolling over on the couch to go back to sleep. And then she remembers. Her eyes snap open, and she rolls on her back to stare at the ceiling as the reality of what's happened begins to set in. Her muscles scream and ache, and she stinks like sweat and copper. The stinging from the cut on her hand makes itself known, and Gaz squeezes her eyes shut, wishing she could just go back to sleep. Unfortunately, there's an alien in her bedroom, and she needs to figure out her next step.

Picking her phone back up and glancing at the time, she decided to skip her next class, as she didn't think she could focus on an art history seminar with all of this going on in her life. For the first time in a long time, she couldn't even remember where her gameslave was. She thought that maybe she left it in the car? As soon as she thought about the car, she realized that she also left the robot and the briefcase there as well… had to get those at some point. That can wait though, she thought. The alien is the first priority. She took a deep breath, and threw the blanket off of her, and slowly stood up, feeling every ache and pain in her body as she did. She tiredly walked toward the bedroom, almost tripping on the mop she left on the floor last night. She approached the door, reached for the handle, and then… stopped.

"This is easy." She whispered to herself. "Just… open the door." Different scenarios played through her head as she stood there, debating. What if she opened the door and he attacked? What if he was dead and leaking acid or something all over the floor?

"You're acting like a baby, Gaz." She said. "It's going to be fine." Surprisingly, she thought about what Dib would do. Probably perform an autopsy and call the news. No, Dib would want to initiate first contact… and get famous. She didn't much care for the famous part, but she had to get the first contact done and over with. She took a deep breath, and opened the door.

He's still asleep. Gaz rolled her eyes for wasting so much energy on how anxious she was about the situation. Finally calming down, she walked toward the bed to investigate how he was doing. The bleeding seems to have stopped which is good, she observed. He seems to be sleeping peacefully, and his breathing seemed normal, although, it's not like she knew what normal breathing for an alien was. With his health seemingly on the rise, she stepped closer to observe what he actually looked like. Even though they were closed, he looked like he has large eyes. She wondered what they looked like. Now that sunlight was flooding into the room, she could see details on his skin better. With some horror, it became quite clear that he had dozens of scars all over his arm and face. Some of them are quite small, like the thin scratch on his cheek, but there's one just above the collar of his shirt left of his neck that looks really bad. It looked like someone with a big knife tried to cut him in half longways.

She felt bad that he was going to have two more scars from the accident to add to his unfortunate collection, but what could she do? Regularly changing the bandages and cleaning the wounds with alcohol would help, but there's no way that they weren't going to scar. Being satisfied with her inspection, she decided that it was time to make him more comfortable.

She pulled his other glove off his hand and set it aside, finally getting a good look at his hands. He only has three fingers on each hand, and they end in scary claws. She decided to give his hands a wide berth. Next were his boots. She didn't particularly like him having shoes on her bed, so she had to take them off. Taking his boots off proved to be harder than expected, as it took her a full five minutes to find the weird button on the inside of the boots that needed to be held for the material they're made of to loosen to get them off. As Gaz pulled the shoes off, she thought to herself as she definitely wanted combat boots made out of the strange material, as it was very sturdy, and a nice shade of black.

With that done, she pulled the towels he was laying on out from underneath him, which caused him to shift a bit in his sleep, but not wake up. She spends the better part of ten minutes slowly but surely easing him under the blankets so he can sleep better, and so she can wash the bloodstained towels. After doing that, she lets out a breath and takes a step back to admire her handiwork. He actually looks kind of peaceful, she thinks. She smiles to herself as she thinks about how lucky she is that the first alien contact isn't a gelatinous blob, otherwise this would have been a lot harder. Messier too.

Suddenly, Gaz realized that even though the alien was asleep right now, it didn't mean he was going to stay that way. She needed a game plan. First thing's first, she needed to get the robot and the suitcase from the car. And then… figure out some way to communicate with him in case he wakes up, because there's no telling how he communicates. Maybe his species uses weird antennae sign language to talk? Maybe he's telepathic? There's really no way to know.

"I need to figure out how to show him that I'm not a threat, and that the human race is 'friendly'." She mutters to herself. "Well, friendly-ish." She rolled her eyes. She definitely doesn't believe that, but she doesn't want to tell an advanced alien race that we're a bunch of assholes on a defenseless rock. Ready for new rulers, please! Not a great idea. She toys with the idea of calling dib, but decides against it. She trusts Dib to not immediately dissect an alien, but she could be wrong about that. Deciding to wait and see what kind of 'person' this alien turns out to be seems to be the best course of action. Leaving the bedroom and quietly closing the door behind her, she sets out to work.

Retrieving the suitcase and the robot proves much easier than lugging the alien through the halls, as she easily wraps the robot completely in a blanket and pretends to have a hip and fashionable metal suitcase. Plus, they aren't so tall that they awkwardly drag on the groud as she walks. When she gets to her apartment, she places the robot and suitcase in a corner in the living room, and then decides to clean up a bit. Gaz wasn't a super clean person, but she didn't particularly like blood everywhere. Thankfully his blood doesn't seem to stain the carpet, so that's good. She even takes some time to organize the small kitchen area, to do something that's 'normal'. With all that done, it's time to focus on how to possibly communicate with him.

She looked at the clock, mentally noting that it was roughly 1 pm now, and he still hasn't woken up, so Gaz didn't have much to go on. So, start from the beginning. Obviously, he's from an advanced species, so proving that humans aren't as stupid as she likes to think they are is a priority. Problem is, how does one go about doing that?

People say that math is a universal language, but Gaz already knows that he won't be able to read the number system or pluses or minuses or anything like that so she needs to think of something else. It shouldn't be that hard to teach him the number system. Use symbols to represent the numbers. So, Gaz takes a piece of paper out and begins to draw dots and numbers next to them. • 1 • • 2 • • • 3 and so on to ten. Hopefully he'll understand what this means.

Now another problem. Any idiot civilization can have numbers, you need to have math. Teaching math will be tricky. Hopefully, he can learn addition and subtraction symbols by first showing him 3+2, 5, and then praying that he understands that. Next, if he gets that, he can learn the equal sign. Then, multiplication and division, and maybe even exponents. Throw some theorems in there, and boom! Mathematics really is the universal language. To show even further understanding, it might be a good idea to draw a rudimentary solar system to show him where he is, and copy the picture of our place in the galactic cluster from the golden voyager record. So in the event he doesn't die and isn't evil, he'll understand the human race is somewhat intelligent, understand where they are in the universe, and that they're kind enough to nurse him back to health. Gaz crosses her fingers and hopes she's not making a mistake.

With all that done, plus a few stock photos of people, she let out a breath and set out to relax and play her gameslave. She wasn't even twenty minutes into the game when she heard something that was not the delightful sound of vampire piggies being murdered. The bed is creaking, which means the alien visitor is awake. Time for action. Gaz gathered all of her math and drawings she made for the alien, and made her way to the bedroom, grabbing a knife on the way just in case. She pressed her ear up against the door, and listened, trying to breathe as quietly as she could. She could hear him shifting in the bed, as if he was getting up. She stuck the knife through a belt loop on the back of her jeans so it would be out of his sight, tucked her paperwork under her arm, psyching herself up, and then opened the door.

As the door slowly opens, more and more of this strange visitor is revealed. He's sitting on the bed, with his legs hanging over the side, and looking at the floor while leaning his head in his left hand. It's hard to tell with the way that his head is angled down, but it looks like his eyes are closed. His antennae are drooping toward the floor, making him look tired, or sad. Gaz steps carefully into the room, and he doesn't move, seemingly not noticing her.

"Hello?" Gaz says, her voice coming out quietly from her nerves. Instantly, his head shoots up and his eyes open. Gaz gasps at the sight of his brilliant ruby red eyes, and how large they are! In just a second, they go from wide open to narrowed as he draws his arms in defensively.

"Aí alsek kha? Aíb kaí kho?" He growls, and Gaz's silly hope of being able to miraculously understand him flies out the door. His voice is low, and his tone is threatening. She makes a mental note to move slowly, and tread lightly. Physically and verbally.

"My name is Gaz, I-" She stopped, and mentally slapped herself in the face. He doesn't understand English, there's no point in talking to him. She took a step closer to him, holding her hands up, palms out.

"Woí? Al ú úrsaíb fízh tulkar?" He cocks his head to the side, and she can definitely tell he's confused by something. "Woí thaípenzin el khí?" He asks, and although Gaz gets the sense that he's not asking about her name, it's the only thing she can think of doing.

"Gaz." She points to herself and says her name. "Gaz." She points to him, and raises her eyebrows, trying to make it clear that she's asking a question. He stares at her for a second, as if he's thinking, but then he seems to understand as he nods slightly, and then points at himself.

"Zim." So aliens have names. Well, she hopes that's his name, unless he misunderstood what she was trying to say, and that's simply the name of his species or something. Slowly, she began to walk towards him, but he doesn't seem to like this much. When she's a few feet away from him, he holds out his hand in a sort of 'stop' gesture and says, "Kaorsaoa zas ga. Núchúzh fisúsa." He looks serious, and annoyed.

"What?" She takes deep, relaxed breaths. "I don't understand." Gaz slowly shakes her head from side to side, hoping he'll understand the subtle cues of confusion.

"Núchúzh fisúsa. Eím 'e gayo... Al suzh ú. 'E kaoplal…" He points behind her, and she carefully turns to see what he's pointing to. There's only a mirror on the wall behind her, and Gaz looks back to face him, confused.

"What? What is it? I don't understand!" He looks a mix of annoyed and frustrated, and his left antennae keeps twitching. He points at the mirror again, then points at his back, and says,

"Kaoplal." Then he makes a stabbing motion. Oh… the knife. He saw the knife in the mirror. Shit.

"It's okay! It was just in case! Look I'll get rid of it…" Gaz carefully pulls the knife out of her belt loop and puts it on the side table next to the bed, then immediately raises her hands and does a quick spin to show him she's unarmed. "See? I'm sorry…" Gaz mentally slaps her face when she realizes how pointless it is to talk to him.

"Íw. Git yú khí. Kaí suzh." He weakly smiles, the look in his eyes revealing how tired he actually seems to be, so Gaz hopes that means he's forgiven her. Hopefully he's a smart enough alien to understand why she had a knife when meeting a stranger from another world.

"Um, look, I brought you something to show you that we're not all idiots." She gently hands him the paper, and he takes them, slowly turning them around in his hands so they're right side up. Gaz stands awkwardly as he slowly shuffles through them, taking his time looking at each page. He doesn't look confused, and seems to be understanding things all right. When he gets to the basic drawing of the solar system, he points to Earth and looks up.

"Khí el kaí kho aíb? Woí khí el thaípenzin jeíú? Buch? El thaípenzin." He continuously points at the small circle symbolizing Earth as he talks.

"Earth. That's Earth." Gaz steps closer and points to the spot for further emphasis. "Earth."

"Urth." He rolls the sound over on his tongue, as if he's tasting it. "Kaí zhu Urth kho." He nods a little as he says it, demonstrating he's at least not going to flip out at this change of location.

"No, no, Earth." Gaz laughs softly at the sheer surrealness of this whole situation. Never in a million years did she think this would be an experience in her life. Blinded by the giddiness of her discovery and the false sense of security from his apparent calm, she takes a step closer that must've been a bit too fast for her new guest, as in the next moment, he's somehow retrieved the knife and is holding it right in front of my throat, and he's all of a sudden standing.

They stand like statues for only a few seconds, Gaz even realizing that she's holding her breath before he blinks, dropping the knife on the ground and stumbles backwards onto the bed.

"Kaío ngaoa. Kaí aíz chin finoízhú…" He was so quiet she could barely hear him, but it sounded like an apology. Gaz finally drew in a shaky breath, and tried to keep her voice steady.

"It's okay. It's okay. Just don't do that again, okay?" She smiles at him and he smiles back. He's definitely not doing well, but he did just crash land on a remote planet and apparently has no idea where he is. A small spark of sympathy flares in Gaz's chest as she thinks about how she would probably also be scared in a situation like this.

"Let's try this again, I'm not going to hurt you." He looks at her skeptically, and she does her best to smile, and holds her hands in the air. "See? You're safe here." He nods and mumbles something again as she came closer to sit down on the bed next to him, subtly kicking the knife under the bed.

"Okay, so this is Earth-"

"Earth."

"Good! Nice job on the pronunciation!"

"Alsek 'aos." He smiles as he speaks, and Gaz finds herself even a bit interested that she just got her first alien thank you.

"So Earth," She pointed to the planet, "is part of the Solar System. Solar System." She gestured to the whole page as she spoke.

"Solar Seestem."

"Eh, close enough." So now he knows another part of his galactic address. "Um, I can't remember what the local cluster is called but here's a picture of the Milky Way. Milky Way." Gaz printed out a couple photos of the milky way, one of those artistic depictions of the galaxy from far away, and a few real photos of what the center of the galaxy (the 'milky' part) looks like from Earth.

"Milky wae?" He actually laughs a bit, it's quiet and breathy and a bit happy. "Vaíluksínsaowi." He points at the picture of the milky way and says, "Milky wae, vaíluksínsaowi." He then points at Gaz and then at himself and points back at the picture.

"You are also from… valooksinsaoo?"

He laughs now, a bit more than the first time, yet still a bit nervous sounding as he corrected her.

"Vaíluksínsaowi."

"Right. Okay, that's good! That means you're probably not far from home." Gaz's brow furrowed as she considered how to ask where he was from. She decided to start with basic terms, and pointed to herself.

"Gaz, Earth." Zim stared at her for a moment, before nodding, although he seemed a bit confused. "Zim….?" She pointed at him, and then gestured at the galaxy photo. This seems to have been a mistake, as his smile dropped off his face and he just stares numbly at the pictures. Gaz was a little shocked… she understood a bit, not everyone has a great home life… but to be unhappy about the planet you're from? That's a new level of childhood trauma.

"Irk. Kaí kho thóí Irk." He says this lowly and quietly, his fists clench and his left antennae twitches. Gaz frowned at the way he spoke, but at least she knows three things about the visitor now, his name is Zim, his planet is in the same galaxy, and it's called Irk. Oh and he doesn't like his planet. Now, what's the name of his species…

"Gaz, Earth, human." She pointed to herself, the picture of the planet, and then a stock photo of a crowd of people that she pulled up on her phone. "Gaz is one human. Humans live on Earth. Gaz, human, Earth. Understand?" He looked at the stock photo for a moment, and then nodded.

"Zim, Irk, Irkib. Irkiba zhu Irk thaík." Cool. Irkens or Irkiba, live on Irk, and Zim is an Irkib. Irken. Same thing, probably. He seems to finally be taking in my room for the first time, and notices that his sleeve is gone, and inspects the injury on his arm.

"Al fin el finoízh?" He gestures to his injury.

"Oh yeah," Gaz nodded. "I'm sorry about the sleeve, you were bleeding…"

"Alsek 'aos. Al aokh li budoízh." She recognized (what she assumed) was the 'thank you' from earlier, so she let him know how to respond.

"You're welcome." A smile from me brings a smile from him, and he repeats it back.

"Yourr wealcome. Alha sís."

"Al...ha sis." She says nervously. He smiles wider at this, showing off some rather impressive sharp teeth. They look like shark teeth almost. Gaz made a mental note of this, assuming that he probably eats a lot of meat.

"Why are you here?" She tries to make this one understood by doing the best shrug and confused face she could manage, pointing at him, and then pointing at the picture of Earth. He looks furious and sad at the same time, which makes her feel (slightly) guilty for even asking.

"Kaí jeítwí ga khú vaísízh." He sighs, and points to himself, then the galaxy and says "Irk," then puts his hands together and pushes them out. Kind of like he's saying pushed away or nothing or gone.

"Is Irk gone?" To make her point, Gaz found a stock video of a planet exploding and showed it to him. To her surprise he laughed a bit and mumbled to himself.

"Kaí 'oích." He turned to face her, looked her in the eye, and shook his head. "Eíd." So that must be the word for no... Gaz imitated him, shaking her head and said "No." back.

"Eíd, no." He says back. To distract from the situation at hand, she decides to teach him yes as well.

"Yes," Gaz vigorously nodded her head. "No." She then shook her head and made a disapproving look. His slight smirk returns, and he responds.

"Mi, yaes. Eíd, no." The number one basic of the English language is now down. Last but not least, Gaz decided to teach him a greeting. She repositioned her body so she was fully facing him, and he did the same.

"Hello." Gaz waved and smiled. "My name is Gaz." Extending her right hand, she carefully and slowly grabbed his and then shook it. "It's nice to meet you." She let go of his hand, and then pointed at him. "Your turn."

"Hello," He says. "My naem is Zim. Eets nice to meet yoo." He reaches forward and shakes her hand.

"So, what do you have here, sir?"

"Obviously it's a ship you idiot. Look at it." General Alex Drewey and a half dozen elite soldiers stand by the crash site watching as a top secret forensics team scours the area.

"Well, I see that, but where is the… occupant?"

"We don't know, forensics picked up some tire tracks over there, so obviously someone got it before we did. Goddamn it. I've spent years tracking any evidence of life on other worlds and the second some hard evidence lands some asshole has to take it for themselves. Have we heard anything in the news yet about any 'occupants?"

"No sir." Major Ian Johnson responds. "No phone calls, no pictures, nothing."

"So whoever took it had some brains."

"Sir!" A member of forensics called out to general Drewey. "We found blood, human blood."