Dib sat waiting by the stairs outside when Zim exited the building. Zim would have liked it better if he hadn't ended up tailing right behind Gaz, his eyes searching for the bullies. It had been too embarrassing before lunch, when these stupid human hormones had gotten the better of him after some mean words and a few shoves. He was not about to be seen weak in front of the Dib again!

"Oh right, you two are in the same class now, huh," Dib said when he noticed them.

"Dib," Gaz said," I'm going to kill your friend if you don't get him off my back, do you get that? I can do that because he's not a legal citizen of earth."

Zim strategically put himself so that Dib sat between him and Gaz.

"Aw, be kind, he's not used to being a real child," Dib said and made a sad face.

"No. I'm going to buy snacks so you can walk home without me," Gaz said and left. Zim relaxed. She was only marginally better than the active bullies in her class, and that was only because she did not care enough. (Today they had attempted to spit chewing gum at him, but they stopped when he went to sit beside Gaz.)

"Okay then," Dib stood, smiling at Zim," Ready to go treasure hunting?"

"That is not what we're doing," Zim frowned.

"One man's gun, another man's treasure," Dib said and started down the stairs.

"That makes no sense! Why are you being so kind to Zim? What is your plan?!"

Dib didn't answer, he simply pondered as they crossed the trafficked, smelly road. Zim glared down at the pavement, watching the tiles beneath them. Before he noticed it himself, he had started jumping over the lines, trying to match his steps to fall inside the gray stone tiles.

"Can't help it, bud. You're just too cute to be mean to!" Dib said, laughing. That threw him out of the strange trance.

"What?" Zim stared incredulously at him. Zim, cute? Such nonsense!

"Well, cute in a kinda ugly, snotty brat way", Dib continued.

"In that case, you're cute in a … a big headed idiot way."

"Uh-huh." Dib looked unimpressed. "Hey, can I ask some more questions?"

"Yes", Zim said without thinking, "Wait, about what?"

"I'm just curious! How different is it being human from being Irken?"

"Oh, this is so much worse!" Again, he spoke without forethought. "I don't understand how you navigate the world with such inferior senses! And you need to eat! SO MUCH! And you're smelly, and need to use the bathroom all the time, and-"

He rambled on. Even Zim couldn't tell if he was trying to insult the human race or if he was just venting about being human. Before he knew it, they arrived at Dib's house, with Dib holding the door open for him.

"Never thought I'd invite you over just like that. Huh. Come to think of it, I've never invited anyone over in my life…" Dib trailed off as he realized how sad his life was.

"Yes very good." Zim waved him off and strutted in. The rant made him feel a little bit more like his usual self, which felt good…

Until he found himself standing there in the middle of the hallway.

"Well, whatcha gonna do?" he heard Dib prompt from behind.

What was he going to do? Not just stand here, that was for sure- but he found himself without direction. Logically, he knew that priority one was to find the gun and revert himself into an Irken. But, hindered as he was by his inferior human brain, he felt absolutely no inclination towards doing that. It was stupid! He was right here, in the building in which the weapon was located, and he just! Couldn't bring himself to do it!

"Um…"

"Well?"

Dib walked past him and looked back with a raised eyebrow. Zim felt a twinge of irritation at that expectant look.

"Yes, I know, I'm going to find my gun! It's not my fault you made me like this!" he snapped, but he couldn't even make himself sound as angry as he would get if his PAK had been functioning properly.

He finally managed to stomp into the house and look around. The Dib-thing's room would be the best place to start, and that was on the upper floor. Yes, see? He could function just fine without being prompted by his PAK.

With a determined nod, he made his way upstairs, with Dib trailing behind him.

"Not my fault, what? That I saved you from PAK mind-control?" Dib said, and Zim walked faster the last few steps.

"It's not mind-control! It's- it's a system for helping you become the most effective member of society that you can be!" Zim felt his human heart pick up the pace.

"Mind-control!" Dib called after him. He escaped into Dibs room and swung the door closed with as much force as he could muster… but Dib just caught it in one hand and let himself in.

"You have no idea what you're talking about."

"Okay. Well go ahead and get your gun then. Go back to being a brainwashed, mind-controlled cog in a machine", Did said, as if he dared Zim to do it. Which was stupid - of course Zim was going to do exactly that! He wanted nothing more than to feel like himself again!

(A thought crossed his mind that he had never felt more like himself than right now, when there was no other presence telling him how to feel and act, but he pushed it down. As deep down as he could.)

Muttering, Zim looked around. His gaze fell on the floor. A stray sweater peeked out from underneath the bed, which seemed like just the perfect hiding spot.

"IS IT UNDER THE BED?" He yelled, pointing accusingly at the area under the bed.

"Why don't you find out?" Dib said.

So Zim did. He crawled underneath and found absolutely nothing but spiders, dust, and a forgotten, half-eaten lollipop. The sight almost had him gagging.

Then he looked in the closet, and behind the curtain, and underneath the desk. He checked the cupboards, which were filled with tech, but he didn't find the tech, to his growing frustration.

"GAAHHH! It's not in here! You're making me look for no- what are you doing?"

Dib had flopped into his bed pretty much as soon as Zim started looking, and now Zim noticed him on his back with some sort of console in his hands.

"Taking care of my villagers", Dib said.

"Lies, you hold no responsibility over any 'villagers'. I would know!" Zim argued as he climbed up the bed and peeked at the screen. A dumb-looking cartoon human was running around with a fishing rod.

"No, it's a game. See? I need to keep the villagers happy so that they stay on my island."

"Are these ugly animals the villagers?"

"Yeah."

"And the even uglier human is you?"

"I made him look kinda cute, but yeah, that's my avatar," Dib said as he made his… avatar cast out the fishing rod into the ocean. A couple of seconds passed, and then he suddenly pressed a button several times, and the avatar caught a fish of some sort.

"Ehhh…. This is nothing like the games I've seen your sister play! There's no blood!"

"This is more of a nice and calm game. It's fun, here, look at all the things I've collected for the museum!" Dib made his avatar run over and into a different building, and Dib started talking about insects and dinosaur bones.

Zim properly laid down on his back beside Dib, transfixed by the game he was playing. Dib kept on talking about the game mechanics and his achievements in the game, which very obviously had no real life value - unlike the violent, zombie-slaying games that Gaz played, which clearly prepared humans for the real, existing horrors of daily life.

"So all you do is collect fruits and bugs and pay back your loans?" Zim asked, incredulous.

"Yeah pretty much!" Dib said, as his avatar shook a tree and made pears fall down.

"Why? Why is this so dull and yet so… alluring?" Zim asked.

"Escapism", Dib said simply," also it's cute, right? All colorful and toony and stuff."

"Colorful", Zim huffed, sitting up and crossing his arms," humans can't even see colors. It's all gray and bleak. No wonder your lives are filled with so much misery."

"Oh yeah, you did say everything looked gray…" Dib looked up at his ceiling, deep in thought. "Maybe you're colorblind? Hold on-"

He put away his gaming console (at which Zim deflated slightly - he'd enjoyed watching that!) and reached for his laptop.

"-There's this test you can do…" he typed something into his search bar and opened up image results, "Look at this image. Can you read the number?"

He showed Zim an image of a circle full of colored dots and within it, a number in differently colored dots. Zim stared flatly at it. Was this a joke?

"Eighteen. I know how to read, Dib."

"Huh. Okay, what about this one?"

"Twenty-seven."

"This one?"

"Six! What is this dumb game?"

"Well, some people can't tell the difference between these colors, so they can't read the number. What you said that everything looked gray, I thought you might be colorblind, but you're not," Dib explained, and Zim laughed.

"Hah! Of course not! I'm not defective, or anything! Silly thought", he wiped a tear from his face, still giggling to himself.

"I guess color blindness is a sort of defect, but it's not that serious. Colorblind people can probably live their lives normally without much trouble."

"Because humans have no standards", Zim shot, receiving a heavy sigh from Dib.

"Sometimes I remember how shitty being an Irken must be."

Zim felt his mood turn sour at that. He hadn't said anything warranting such a response from the Dib, and yet he went about insulting Irken superiority!

"What's that supposed to mean? You don't understand the importance of weeding out the weak! Your species doesn't have an intergalactic empire, does it?!"

"Are you listening to yourself?" Dib shot back, frowning, "'weeding out the weak'. What if you were the defective one? Would you be okay with being killed because of some flaw that's out of your control?"

"SHUT UP!" Zim put his hands on his ears, trying to keep out the gut-wrenching emotion that flared up at Dibs words. "You don't know! You don't know what it's like!"

"I don't know what what's like? Being different? Living in a society that wants me to be better than I am? You shut the fuck up", Dib almost yelled, Zim could hear it through his covered ears.

"Irken society is better be-because-" Zim breath hitched and he yelled out in frustration. He felt dizzy, and like he wasn't getting enough air. This was just like when he'd first been turned into a human! His own body felt like it was failing him, he felt his vision blur, sounds becoming muted-

"Because why?" He heard Dib snap at him, sounding farther away, not at all like he was sitting right there, even though Zim knew that he was-

"Because it is! We don't allow weakness, or differences, and it makes us stronger!" He managed to gasp out, but he hated how it sounded. He wished he had his PAK functioning to fill him with the conviction that he was telling the truth.

"It makes you fools. You're the biggest idiot of them all if you're not seeing that now."

"No!" Zim couldn't tell why he was protesting. It was just too much and he couldn't have both his own conflicted feelings and Dib yelling at him at the same time. He dug his palms into his eyeballs, and yelled.

"Zim-" He felt a hand on his shoulder, and he flinched away. His hand flew up, clenched into a fist, and lashed out, hitting Dib square in the jaw.

Dib moved back, jaw agape, rubbing the point of impact while Zim struggled to catch his breath.

He hadn't meant to punch him.

But he wasn't about to apologize for it, either.

"There's no use trying to explain it to a stupid human!" He wheezed," And being human is stupid and unreliable and useless! You don't understand how awful this is!"

Dib opened his mouth to say something, but Zim stood up and turned his back.

"I'm going home."

Zim marched along the pavement. In the midst of emotions swirling inside of him, he could feel the anger, and he tried to hold onto it. It was familiar, he could handle angry. Angry was productive. Everything else was dumb and useless and human.

"GIR! I'm home!" He yelled as he slammed the door open. "You won't believe the stupid things that the Dib-thing said!"

From within the base, he heard GIR's screeching voice come closer.

"MMAAAASSSSTEEERRRRRRRRR!" GIR burst out from the trash can, dressed in his dog suit. "I missed you!- oh."

"O-oh? Oh what?" Zim asked, voice thick with something, something human.

"Aw, why you so sad, master?" The little robot asked as he leaned into Zim's personal space.

"I'm not-!" Zim hiccuped, feeling something wet run down his cheek.

"You don't need to cry, I is here now!" GIR wrapped his arms around him, causing him to tense up. He wanted to push him away, wipe the tears off and keep trying to hold onto that seed of anger within him.

But he couldn't.

GIR felt warm, and his dog suit soft against his skin. The physical contact almost made him cry harder, like the mental walls he'd built to keep himself together were coming crumbling down.

He clutched the back of GIR's suit as another sob wracked his body.

"I-I just-" he started, "I HATE this! All these stoopid feelings! I hate being human, and a kid! I'm-I'm just helpless all the time! But what WORSE, is that… that I think I... h-hate being Irken even more."

The moment he said that he froze. It felt like he was about to be struck by lightning, or that his PAK would wake up finally and stop his treacherous thoughts. Nothing happened though, and he kept standing, alive, holding onto GIR like a lifeline while the tears kept streaming down his face.

"Master, you can be whatever you wants to be, I'll still wuv you!" GIR exclaimed happily, his mouth slightly too close to his ear for the volume to be comfortable.

That caused more tears to flow, and he wailed pathetically. He kept sobbing, and complaining, and crying with no signs of stopping. There was just too much for him to cry about. It wasn't just that he was turned into a human and now had the mental capacity of a twelve-year-old (although that was part of it) - he found himself crying out over how he'd been treated as an Irken.

He'd been ignored, pushed around, called defective his entire life. He had an idea, it was laughed at. He tried to help, and he got banished to foodcourtia. He did his best to invade earth for the empire, and was met with nothing but uninterested or even displeased gazes. No matter what he did, he would never, ever, be accepted.

Without his PAK online, this realization could freely wash over him. And he knew it was the truth.

At some point, they'd moved to lie on the couch, but Zim couldn't quite remember how that had happened. GIR's one shoulder was absolutely soaked from his crying, which couldn't be good for his circuitry, but Zim couldn't bring himself to care. He kept hugging his robot like a lifeline.

Eventually, though, the sobs did subside, and Zim lay there, exhausted. GIR wiggled out of his slack grasp.

"You feelin' better now?" he asked.

Zim thought about it. His eyes felt swollen, and he was developing a headache, but…

His head felt empty. Silent. All those swirling, negative emotions were gone, replaced by a void and a bone-deep exhaustion. But he felt… at peace. Like a million tons of weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

"Yes…" He mumbled. "Yes. I feel good."