"So it's coming from Dad's lab?"

Gaz was now very intrigued indeed. She sat across from Dib in the living room as he pulled open his laptop, Gaz pulling open a can of "Mountain Spew" and drinking away. Dib glanced over at the black can, raising an eyebrow. "Yeah…but why are you drinking that new flavor? Aren't you more into the original?"

"Yeah, but I wanna give the new flavor a try and I gotta be honest, it ain't bad for a zero calorie soda. It tastes like the way Mountain Spew used to way back in the day. A LOT better than their diet one, I'll tell ya that." Gaz remarked. "And it ain't given me diarrhea yet, so that's a plus."

Dib did the very best he could to suppress his laughter. When it came to Gaz's diet, her constantly going to Bloaty's Pizza Hog had real consequences. The cheese round the clock was getting her blocked, but when the levee finally broke, well…frankly, so did the toilet. Many, many times. And she would make him clean it.

There had been a positive to this though. Dib was now amazingly good at plumbing and mechanical engineering and he was actually picking up some decent money loaning his services out to the neighborhood as a plumber…provided nobody told the local trade unions about what he was up to, because compared to them, he was real cheap. So now he could afford a VERY nice laptop with all the bells and whistles as he showed it off to Gaz.

"Yeah, the IP address was traced back to Dad's lab. Unfortunately, I can't track it down to the very computer, Dad does have enough security in place to keep me from seeing that and no way am I risking jail time by cracking that open. They almost busted me last month when Dad tried to install the "Parental Controls" on our new television and I don't want Officer Krupke giving me that lecture again."

Indeed, in one of the very few times Dib and Gaz had been bound by common strife and pledged to work together for a common good, Professor Matthew Membrane had installed parental controls on their television because he was concerned about the damage being done to them from exposure to new Netflix series. Especially with all the brand new true crime dramas popping up all the time, it turned out to be something both Dib AND Gaz positively loved, the chase, the investigation, the grisly details, it was so engaging. They would watch together on the couch, eyes glued to the screen, binge-watching for hours and hours and then eagerly chatting about ALL they'd seen at dinner.

Well, Membrane had been determined to stop them from having their minds all twisted up by violence and at first it worked really well.

"C'mon! I wanna watch "The Ken and Barbie Killers!"

"Fat chance. You're gonna watch Cupcake Wars and you're gonna like it."

"Damn it, lemme watch Don't F—k with Cats, it's a classic!"

"No way. You're going to watch "Masterpiece Theatre"."

"Well…if it's got Patrick Stewart in it that might not be so-"

"Featuring Brian Blessed in the star role of Macbeth!"

"OH GOD NO!"

"Hey, what gives?!"

"That's enough cartoons for you today. You're gonna watch some Animal Planet…no, wait. Better. C-Span. It's good to be involved in politics these days."

"Oh c'mon, it's just hearings on air traffic controllers! You fiend!"

So finally, Gaz had insisted Dib get rid of the thing.

"I'd be risking major jail time!"

"Dib…it's recording the best of Fuller House."

"…I'll go get my screwdriver."

Dib had indeed almost got caught and had to listen to a very irritating lecture from the police. It was rather astounding they got to the house so quick over that, but whenever Dib tried to let them know Zim was up to something, it was "Yeah, we'll get to you when we can".

The good news was the parental controls issue got solved soon enough. Professor Membrane himself decided to get rid of it, saying that though he was worried about the things they were watching, it was his job, not some machine's, to judge and curate what his children saw.

Translation: the parental controls wouldn't let him watch "The Mandalorian" because it was too violent.

"Well can we look up who's working at Dad's laboratory who might have a grudge against you?" Gaz asked as Dib grinned.

"Luckily, that's not protected health information, Dad lists all the employees on the website and under "Contact Us"!" He remarked as his fingers flew across the keyboard and he then turned the laptop to fully show Gaz the list. "Look at who's listed? Keef, of all people is one of the assistants, he's an intern!"

"Hmm. I've always thought there's something off about him…and his stories, well…" Dib cringed.

Keef was definitely, one hundred percent not allowed to write anything even remotely close to sexual. The school had no problem with stories about, say…Zim skinning people alive in one of HIS work. For some reason, that was just fine. Oh, but a bit of soft sex, nakedness? No no no no no! Bad!

But Keef had found a way around that and did stories with lots of innuendo, and a ton…a ton of stories involving Dib, Gaz, Zim…and romance. He called the ones between Zim and Dib "ZADR" and with Gaz and Zim "ZAGR". You could find them cute if you were into that sort of thing, after all, many were astoundingly well written, lovingly detailed, and your heart would begin racing as you kept reading his creative writing tales.

But Dib didn't much like the idea. For one, Zim was over 150, he was waaaaay too old for either him…or Gaz. Two, EW. Three, a lot of the stories had Dib's own personality being ignored just so he could smooch it up with Zim! It didn't come across as a natural evolution or a progression or character development that made sense, it was just "I want this person here, so I'm just going to force them to be there, even if it makes no sense, because the plot is pretty much porn".

Gaz, however, kinda thought it was cute in a funny sort of way. She also knew it wasn't like Dib had never thought about kissing Zim, Dib was still discovering himself, after all, and he had had dreams about…that sort of thing.

"And there's Mr. Elliot!" Dib added. "Wow, why did he decide to work there?"

Gaz smirked and chuckled inwardly. Nobody would EVER know how she got rid of him, and she wasn't gonna tell anyone. And if she wanted you out of your job at the school, it would happen. Now, there were three ways to stop her from doing what she do.

…what? You think imma TELL you?

"He could have finally snapped." Gaz mused aloud. "I mean, when the nice ones snap…they really, really go wild. It's the nice guys you need to watch out for, you can trust a jerk to always be a jerk. But when a decent person goes bad, they go baaaaaad."

"Yeah, that's possible." Dib confessed. "Hmm. Look, our janitor works there too." He murmured. "Johnny."

…Johnny. The one and only Johnny. A slim, slender man, messy black hair that was just downright ugly and grimy. A pale body, sunken eyes, and he smelled strange too, like meat that had been left out on the counter for far too long. He liked making little snappy remarks at people too.

"Did you wash the bathrooms like we asked?"

"I'll wash the walls with your blood!"

"Well before you do that, wash the bathrooms."

On top of that, there were rumors that he caked blood on the walls of his janitorial closet to feed a monster that laid within. He was always seen sinisterly smoking at the very edge of school property at night, an anti-social, creepy figure indeed. Him being the actual troll…it wasn't unreasonable to think of Johnny, curled up in his closet, hunched over his laptop, spewing hate out into the world.

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait, look!" Gaz pointed at one of the names. "…Tassirak. That girl's name's Tassirak Doe."

Dib frowned, and he examined the photo that went with the name. "Doe" was a common name for a dead body you hadn't identified and-wait. Wait. Those eyes. The facial structure. The hair may have been different, the skin tone less pale, but Dib recognized those eyes instantly, and that faint Mona Lisa smile too.

And he knew that name, because Tak, Irken Invader, had divulged that to him.

Dib had gotten really close to Tak when she'd first arrived, the purple-haired British-accented girl had been charming, intelligent and clever, and they'd had similar interests. He'd soon spent weeks with her, the two just…talking. Making fun of Zim, chatting about their favorite books and movies they'd read, sharing stories about adventures out in the wild…

And of course, that Valentine's Day dance. "No, no. One-two-three, swing! One-two-three, swing!" Tak had insisted to him.

"Ouch! Don't drag me!"

Her lessons on dancing were harsh but in truth, that time spent with Tak had probably been the happiest he'd ever been.

And that's how he should have known it was a lie. Because Dib knew he wasn't meant to be happy. He'd known that…for a long time.

She'd revealed her real name. They'd eaten lunches and even a dinner or two together. Seen movies and he'd walked her home. And then, just a few days later, she'd turned out to be an Irken invader.

It had hurt. A lot. He'd lost a friend. And maybe someone more. It had really…really hurt.

"Does SHE have an account on the website?" Dib murmured as he examined the school's creative writing website. "…oh wow, yeah, she does, she's using her old username and password she got when she first enrolled, there's not much, but they're there. Wow." He examined them. "She wields metaphors like blunt instruments. You can feel Tak in every single sentence, so much of it is in first person and there is a lot of really biting, cynical wit in here. It feels almost nihilistic. And it's super petty, too. A lot of really nasty stuff happening to folks she doesn't like."

"Wow, one story has her as the Tallest." Gaz remarked. "…damn, she cooked and ate the last ones. That's hardcore scary."

"It's beautifully written though, I'd like to shake her hand than recommend her to therapy." Dib admitted. "I mean, she's going into really grisly detail on every minute they die. She must be super bitter. I don't even wanna imagine what happens to Zim when she updates this story, she just finished catching him and she's got him tied up in…Japanese rope bondage? She's into BDSM?"

"The safe word is "eine kleine nachtmusik"." Wow, somebody's letting their inner Hannibal Lecter out, alright." Gaz said with a whistle. "…still, I kinda WANT her to update just to see what happens. It's like watching a train wreck, you kinda can't look away."

"It could definitely be here. We need to go to the lab and sneak onto those computers. If they saved their work on them at any point, I could prove they were behind it." Dib reasoned.

"I dunno, Dib. Not sure I wanna help you with this. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not really fun anymore watching you get dragged again and again for what the troll's doing, but…" She shrugged. "I mean, it's not my problem."

"What if I paid you?" Dib offered as Gaz rubbed her chin.

"…keep talking, Mr. Moneybags."

"My new job is paying me verrrrry well. To plant roses, I've shoveled a lot of manure, as it were." Dib remarked. "So how about it? Is there a new game you want me to buy?" He offered as Gaz thought to herself.

"Hmm. Well…now that you mention it, there is one game that's coming out that I really want. It's Sekiro: Shadows Die Thrice. Comes out in a week. You buy me that, I'll come with you."

"Deal." Dib insisted.

And so, Dib and Gaz made their way to Professor Membrane's lab that weekend as a quilt of dark clouds obscured their stealthy approach. Slinking on inside through the ventilation shaft as Dib temporarily looped the footage of the nearby camera watching the southern side of the laboratory, they crept through the vents and finally deposited themselves in, of all places, Johnny's closet in the lab.

There was a laptop there, hidden by a bucket. Gaz picked it up, gazing through it as she nodded over at Dib. "I'll look over this one, you go look for Keef's. Then we'll meet back here in…half an hour and go look for Mr. Elliot and Tak's."

"Deal." Dib said with a nod, quickly exiting the closet, getting his camera-hacking tool ready as it was clasped tight around his wrist. The lab was almost utterly closed for the moment, most people were heading home, there was just a skeleton crew left over. This meant it was easy for Dib to sneak around, avoiding spots in the security camera's vision and using his hacking tool to loop footage when he couldn't.

At long last, he reached a work station, the same station Keef had been said to be working at, since the website had said he was paired with a "Dr. Jones". Dib looked about, listening intently. No cameras here, and nobody was inside or anywhere nearby. So he slunk over to the computer and booted it up.

Ha! Keef had been the last one to use the PC, his username was on display. And Dib had a feeling he could guess the password.

Yep! Sure enough, it was "ZADRZAGR". "Oh, Keef…ya basic." Dib chuckled as he looked over Keef's internet history and-

"…hoooooo boy."

Well, Keef definitely, one hundred percent was not the one who sent the reviews. But now Dib knew where Keef got so much help in…inspiration…for his work. He had no idea Keef swung that way!...and that way, AND that way and THAT way.

"Well, um…whatever does it for you, Keef." Dib decided, quickly deciding to erase the internet history and log off, shaking his head. Meanwhile, Gaz had finally guessed Johnny's password. She'd had a feeling it was "Mammon" and yep…it was Mammon. Johnny may have been a loyal, devoted Satan-worshipping weirdo…but he wasn't very smart. He'd left a post it note reminding himself to change his last password since it was too easy to guess, and he needed a better one, and to pick a better demon lord. Unluckily for him, not only had he tossed that post it note in the trash can in the very closet Gaz was in, she'd realized the password hint immediately. "Greed is Good". Well, there were a few Demon lords best known for Greed and one of the best had been what she'd picked.

PING! She was in. And my oh my, Johnny had been a naughty boy. He'd taken selfies to share on the Internet of him and the bloody wall he caked gore on, selfies he was sharing on the Dark Web. Nasty stuff indeed. One particularly "funny" one showed him making a kind of macabre "snowman" on the wall with some exposed ribs and a bashed in nose and two eyes burned up like coals!

And then there were his uploads to "Bestgore". Yeccchhh. Gaz was fine with dooming the deserving wretches, but Johnny was just an outright creep about this-

Wait.

Wait, was that a cat?

He wouldn't.

…he WOULDN'T-

Gaz's mouth fell open and then she darkly glowered, shutting the video off and going through the rest of the janitor's internet history. No, he wasn't the one leaving those reviews. But he was guilty, alright. Just not of the sin Dib thought he was guilty of.

A few minutes later, Dib knocked on the closet door and she exited it, giving Dib a solemn look. "He's not the one. He's a piece of shit, but he's not the one."

Dib could see something was very, very wrong, Gaz had a look on her face he'd only seen when she'd seen crime specials on killers who hurt animals. He thought it best not to ask about it. "I understand. It isn't Keef, either. He's into a lot…but not into that sort of thing."

So now it came time to check the other computer stations. Luckily for them, both Mr. Elliot and Tak were working in the same wing.

Unluckily for them, they were still there. A fact the two found out when they opened the door…

Just in time to see Mr. Elliot AND Tak currently hunched over a computer screen. "What the?!" Dib gasped out as the two wheeled around, seeing Dib and Gaz, staring in surprise as Dib and Gaz looked behind them and-

…Jackass? They were watching Jackass videos?

"You're into those stupid stunt videos where the guys get, like, basketballs bounced onto their balls after they're launched onto trampolines?" Gaz inquired as Tak and Mr. Elliot deeply blushed, Dib racing over to the computer, gaping at the sight before his eyes. He couldn't believe it.

"But it's so…lowbrow! So…STUPID!" He remarked aloud.

"But it's funny." Mr. Elliot said with a shrug. "I can't help it, I find it funny."

"Yeah, something about it simply clicked with me." Tak admitted. "I mean, I do enjoy watching stupid humans suffering for my amusement."

"Yeah, the Germans have a term for it. Schadenfreude." Mr. Elliot confessed. "Happiness at the misfortune of others." He added as Dib looked through their internet history. Yeah, they'd hadn't left the reviews either. All that work, all that effort for…nothing! Except now he knew stuff about his classmates he really, REALLY wish he could unlearn.

"It's not that funny." Gaz said, though she chuckled as she saw a video of Johnny Knoxville soaring off a motorcycle and into a ball pit, groaning loudly…because he was butt naked when he did it. "Okay, maybe a LITTLE funny."

"Sometimes you just wanna indulge in something nice, simple and a bit stupid. Not everything has to be Shakespeare, after all. It fills a need and it doesn't really harm anyone." Tak remarked. "Well, except them, but they get paid for it, so…" She shrugged.

Dib moaned. "Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it. I thought for SURE…"

"You're really not that Pig Shit troll, huh?" Tak wondered aloud. "I thought maybe you were doing some kind of false flag, Dib, but…no, it really isn't you." She commented dryly. "Hmm. Well, best of luck with that. Unless another classmate of yours, like, pees their pants or something in front of everyone in school, nobody's going to forget this anytime soon. The good news is that people have short memories. A month or two passes by, and you'll be fine. Folks are like GOLDFISH. Best and worst thing about them!" She laughed.

"…yeah, maybe if I slip Zim some ex-lax under the guise of it being a candy bar I can trick him into taking from me…" Dib mumbled as he slunk out of the room. "This sucks. This totally sucks."

"Cheer up, tomorrow Dad's going to treat us to breakfast, remember?" Gaz offered. "You always like that." She told him as they headed out the office door and down the hall to exit out of the building.

"Yeah, him making his pancake and eggs combo with bacon always-"

Dib stopped. Wait.

…wait.

Could it be?

"…I need to check one more computer." He quietly muttered at Gaz, his voice sounding cold and dead.

…

…

…

… "You liking your delicious breakfast, son?" Professor Membrane asked as Gaz stared at Dib, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He'd said absolutely nothing since their Dad had begun making breakfast and now he was halfway through his meal when he slowly finished chewing and looked up.

"…it's really nice." Dib remarked. "Can I ask you something, Dad?" Dib wanted to know, as he put the fork down and folded his hands in his lap.

"Of course, son! Anything!" Professor Membrane said as Dib took in a long, deep breath.

"Why did you do it? Why did you do those reviews?"

Professor Membrane dropped the plate of bacon he had in his black-gloved hands, looking astounded. Dib went on, speaking quietly. Softly. Soft…but with an edge.

"I thought about it, long and hard. I remembered you were the one who encouraged me to come see you if I kept having problems. The IP address was also traced back to your lab. And then I thought about how…ridiculous the reviews were. They were so badly written but…not badly written enough for someone in my class to have done it. I mean, even a 9 year old knows not to write in all caps. It had to be somebody older, trying to be over the top. And then when I checked your computer, just to be sure…I found out…yes. It was you." He remarked. "…so Dad…why'd you do it?"

Professor Membrane sighed as he sat down at the table, and held his head in his hands. "I…I did want to try and…push you into my arms, as it were. That if I put a little pressure on you in your school setting, you'd keep coming back to me to talk about how you felt. It allowed me to feel like I was the only person you could truly trust, and that felt good. But it wasn't just that, I…" He took a deep breath. "It was…funny to write those reviews. Sometimes it just feels good to be…so lowbrow and coarse and nasty." He admitted. "It was like I tapped into some dark, twisted part of me that'd I'd been ignoring for so long, and when I finally got a chance to let it run wild, it felt amazing!"

He rose up a little and went on. "I have the weight of the world on my shoulders. I need ways to unwind myself. I didn't really think I was actually doing any harm. Or maybe…I didn't want to believe it, because I didn't really mean all the things I said, so how could it be anything that bad?" He murmured as Dib took off his glasses, Gaz taking in a short, sharp breath.

Dib never…ever did that. Him doing that meant he must have been really furious.

"…I don't think I want to talk to you for a while, Dad." He quietly muttered.

"…I thought as much." His father sighed as they sat across from one another in silence at the breakfast table, and Gaz quietly sipped on her orange juice.

Come the next day, it was a school day again, and Dib was making his way down the hallway before he overheard a rather familiar accusation.

"I'm telling you, he's writing about your fic in his fic. He's trashing your fic and making fun of it and you as a writer. He's a troll but pretends he isn't and just blames it on another troll when he keeps trolling."

Dib turned around, seeing Zita talking to the Letter M and he frowned a bit as he stared at the girl and the African American boy she was talking to.

"You know, you're just plain wrong." He said aloud, as other kids began to look at him. "It was my dad all this time. Not me. And I don't really care if you don't believe me. I've said my piece. You don't like it, tough." He told her, walking off.

"You think that'll convince us?"

"No. But maybe there's no point in casting pearls before swine." Dib said with a shrug as he walked off. "And people like you who just plug their ears and won't listen to any counterarguments are real pigs indeed." He remarked as he walked off, Gaz walking alongside him.

"Pearls before swine, huh? Nice Bible quote." She remarked. "But I wouldn't be too worried. Tak was right. Just wait a month or so, folks will forget."

"Oh, I don't doubt it. I thought about sneaking Ex-Lax to Zim but…I'm not going to lower myself to that." Dib insisted. "Even if it would be really funny."

"Well, I've got something that'll cheer you up." Gaz offered. "I copied the videos Johnny the Homicidal Maniac did for the dark web and I sent it to the police and now he's in jail! So we're gonna need a new janitor."

Dib stopped in the hall. "…wait, is this because of how good I am at plumbing now? Look, there's no way I can be the new janitor. I'll be a laughingstock! Dib, the janitor!"

"Yeah…but you will get keys to every single room in the school." Gaz added. "And paid twice what those neighbors pay you."

Dib chewed his lip. "…well…when you put it like that…I mean, it would be nice to be able to literally go anywhere I want in the school at any time…and I could use the dough…"

"You could rig the toileeeeets so that they always act uuuuuup whenever Zim goes to use iiiiiit." Gaz added in a faint, singsong voice.

"…I KNEW there was a reason I respected you." Dib said with a big grin.