Nobody's looking. Well, Gaz is, so practiced in her game she doesn't even need to see the screen to know which buttons to mash-- by this point, I suspect it's mostly muscle memory. It's also extremely creepy. Zim isn't looking, though, and at the moment that's what's important; he's engrossed in, fascinated by, almost, a small blue and orange device that I'll definitely have to get my hands on later and take apart, piece by piece by piece. No time for that now.

With every ounce of my honed, ninja-like stealth, I wind my arm across the table, aiming straight for that alien's stupid lunchbox and whatever edible food it may contain. In my mind's eye, I can see the fanfare, the confetti, the screaming women, the reporters in tacky Christmas neckties worn four months too late coming up to me after it's all over, each vying for the privilege of talking to me, Dib, eater of food.

"Dib!" they'll call, overlapping each other like a dozen parrots, "Just how did you do it?"

It'll be beautiful, trumpets will be playing and there will be parties in the street and oh god those biscuits are looking at me

Two years ago today, my life had been flying saucers, horrible twitching and the kind of constant, droning whine in the base of your brain that can't possibly be a good thing but you can't really think of anything to do about it because of all the noise. You know, normal. And as normal, all my troubles were radiating out from a single spindly B.E.M., a little green man with technology I'd never even dreamed of and not a single nanoliter of competence in his sick alien body. I'd hated him from the second I saw him. I'd still hate him today if my…she's still staring at me…if Gaz hadn't forced that truce on us after we broke her rabbit cyborg. Every day, that droning whine gets more a little harder to bear. Every single day.

There's a gross sort of thud as a lunchbox lid gets slammed overzealously on top of my right hand and I retract it like a long strip of elastic snapping back in place. Nursing my injured appendage, I can only watch as Zim sucks in a great deal of nitrogen, obviously preparing to give a trademark long shrieky speech. I sense an ominous, almost evil aura…

"Horrible..piggy-based…doom." And my sister speaks. The tension, which before had been so thick you couldn't have cut it (not even with a knife), is suddenly dispelled from the atmosphere like a demon from some ill-begotten little girl's stomach and Zim, motivated entirely by self-preservation, I'm sure, begrudgingly produces a small plastic sphere full of bluish powder. He throws it at my head.

"Here, if you must take, take this," he says, his nasty, self-sure voice turning up in disgust at the end of the sentence like it always does and man, I really want to hit this guy. Without warning, indeed without even seeming to move, he's on the table, disquieted lunchtrays swirling around him like somebody had shaken up a great big Zim-globe. Gaz, of course has earplugs at the ready. I'm not so lucky, and apathetically concede defeat as the lunchtrays' upended contents start to eat into the floor. Hell.

"Take it, human, for the snack your sweaty Earth grabby-hands hold in their confines is the single most disgusting piece of filth ever produced by the great inner sanctum of Foodcourtia's hideous new product testing! Even the almighty Tallest, praised be their name, would retch upon the very sight of this horrific onslaught of fright and terror! Only a fool, a sick and twisted fool would be foolish enough to dare to attempt to eat it and live! Its smell alone is enough to send every last creature on the imaginary Planet of Mop into deadly fits of howling cleaning rampages, scrubbing left and right until the whole universe is sparkling and devoid, DEVOID I SAY of any and all traditional cleaning supplies! In the blink of an eye, a plague of dirty countertops the likes of which has never before been seen will overtake us, and NONE SHALL LIVE.

"LISTEN TO ZIM, for only I know what that horrible container contains! It is a putrid tale of strife and woe, a tragedy rife with terror and FURIOUS PROJECTILE VOMITING.

"If only you knew, Earth-boy," he finishes, shaking his head sadly, "if only you knew."

Something explodes on Gaz's Game Slave screen, but otherwise the cafeteria is silent as Zim clambers back down into his seat and coughs his excuse. "Ahem. I am normal."

There's another moment or two of stunned silence before a collective shrug sweeps across the cafeteria and the children, in unison, return to whatever it was they where doing. Gaz leaves in her earplugs.

-

In the old days, before the truce, there'd been an empty glass bottle of Kiwi-Strawberry Snapple.

I'd deemed it my Official Paranormal Water Bottle of Spookiness, and during the oft-happening 43-hour stretches of monitoring the cameras I'd (secretly) planted in various spots of Zim's lab, it would often be my only source of sustenance. Flipping the red and black switch on my right would bring to life a machine specifically designed to redirect tap water from the kitchen sink, run it through several filters and vitamin infusers, mix it with a flavor jet to make sure it was still drinkable, add some blue food dye for kicks, and pour it out a nozzle spouting from the drywall next to me directly into that all-important empty Snapple bottle. I'd been rather proud of the whole apparatus. Not as proud, of course, as of the modifications I'd made to stolen alien software, a key bit of that letting me monitor Zim's house at all. Everyday after school, after the too-easy homework and the student's glassy-eyed stares and the soul-crushing lectures, I'd sit down with my superwater and watch my favorite show that didn't contain the words mysterious or mysteries.

Since then, of course, I've tossed the Snapple bottle and dismantled my water machine. What use are they? Not even my hacked-up, half human/half Irken computer gets much mileage these days. The monitoring software is full of glitches and bugs from a two-year span of updateless desert, the compiled Irken dictionary gets the occasional glance but there's no more burning need to learn the stupid language. I've taken up writing. It's not at all the same.

-

An entire week later and the story never changes, never varies even once. We're actors, the both of us, actors on a burning stage performing the same scene over and over again for the sick amusement of a single scary fan. I don't know why he's playing along, saying his lines and poking me when necessary, but I try not to think about it as I'm dropped rather carelessly at my own front door; another morning, another day of curtainless hell. They just refuse to fall.

"I hate you, Dib."

I sigh. I've rehearsed this. "I know."

We walk, Zim joins, cockroaches die, Gaz leaves us and we trudge off to class. Zim and I are silent as we take our seats, but my mind is buzzing, more so than always. Something seems hideously insignificantly off, as if Ms. Bitters hired a service crew yesterday afternoon to come in and paint every surface exactly one shade greener. This can't be possible, and yet the pure difference is making my insides squish as I hold my trapper to my chest to keep them all in. This can't be possible, my event-starved mind is playing tricks on me, dangling some kind of odd mirage just to pull it away at the last moment. It's not a healthy thing, I want to think, but then again, neither is this constant drone.

"Good morning, little burdens to the state. Today I have some horrible news."

Oh fuck no.